I 


THE  BEACON  BIOGRAPHIES 

EDITED    BY 

M.  A.  DeWOLFE  HOWE 


EDWIN    BOOTH 

BY 

CHARLES   TOWNSEND   COPELAND 


Digitized  by  tine  Internet  Archive 

in  2007  witii  funding  from 

IVIicrosoft  Corporation 


littp://www.arcliive.org/details/edwinbootliOOcoperich 


THE 


B0SX03ir 


EDWIN    BOOTH 


CHARLES  TOWNSEND  COPELAND 

7/ 


BOSTON 

SMALL,  MAYNARD  &  COMPANY 

MDCCCCI 


Copyright^  I^OI 
By  Small^  Maynard  ^  Company 

{Incorporated) 


Entered  at  Stationers^  Hall 


a 


Press  of 
George  H,  Ellis^  Boston 


The  photogravure  used  as  a  frontispiece 
to  this  volume  is  from  a  copy  of  a  photo- 
graph taken  in  1890  hy  Mr.  Ignatius  Gross- 
mann,  BootWs  son-in-law.  Booth  sent  this 
copy  to  Mr.  Thomas  Bailey  Aldrich,  with 
a  letter  from  which  the  following  words, 
giving  his  own  opinion  of  the  likeness,  are 
taken : 

'Hhe  whole  thing,  [the  Sargent  portrait] 
even  the  long  thin  legs  <^  graceless  trousers 
are  me  &  mine.  I  have  a  photograph 
for  you  whose  expression  is  very  similar,  & 
wh.  I  consider  the  best  of  me  ever  made  : 
it  was  done  by  chance  by  Grossmann  one 
day  last  Summer,  at  the  Pier ;  I  liked  it 
so  well  that  he  had  it  enlarged  <&  finished 
properly  &  I  had  a  few  for  my  friends 
struck  off.  The  absence  of  theatrical  effect 
&c,  is  its  great  merit  S  that  is  what  pleases 
me  in  Sargent^  s  portrait. 

'^  Love  for  you  all,  God  bless  you. 

"  ED  WINr 

The  present  engraving  is  by  John  Andrew 
&  Son,  Boston. 


4r\r\r-^r^r^/r^ 


IN  MEMOKIAM  D.  B. 


PEEFACB. 

Without  Mr.  William  Winter^  s  full  and 
authoritative  ''Life  and  Art  of  Edwin 
Boothj^^  this  hook  could  not  have  been  writ- 
ten. It  owes  less  yet  much  to  "  The  Elder 
and  the  Younger  Booth,^^  by  the  late  Mrs. 
J.  S.  Clarice;  and  to  ''Edwin  Booth: 
Eecollections  by  his  Daughter,  Edwina 
Booth  Grossmann ;  and  Letters  to  her  and 
to  his  Friends.^ ^ 

The  writer  is  greatly  indebted  to  Mr. 
Aldrich  for  permission  to  print  hitherto 
unpublished  letters  of  Booth,  and  for  the 
loan  of  the  rare  photograph  reproduced  as 
frontispiece. 

The  writer  is  obliged  to  Messrs.  Hough- 
ton, Mifflin  &  Co.,  and  to  Mr.  Aldrich,  for 
permission  to  reprint  the  poem  entitled 
"8argenfs  Portrait  of  Edwin  Booth  at 
'The  Players.'' ^^ 

0.  T.  C. 

Cambbidgb,  8  Noyember,  1901. 


CHEOKOLOGY. 

1833 
November  13.  Edwin  Booth  was  born  at 
Belair,  Maryland. 

1849 
First  appearance  on  the  stage,  at  Boston 
Museum. 

1851 
Acted  Eiehard  III  for  the  first  time. 

1852 
Went  to  California  with  his  father.     His 
father  died. 

1854 
Visited  Australia,    Samoan   and  Sand- 
wich Islands. 

1857 
April  20.    Appeared  at  Boston  Theatre 
as  Sir  Giles  Overreach. 

1860 
July  7.  Married  Miss  Mary  Devlin  and 
sailed  soon  afterwards  for  England. 

1861 
September.  First  appearance  in  London, 
as  Shylock, 


xii  CHEONOLOGY 

1861  (continued) 
December  9.  Edwina  Booth  born  at  Pul- 
ham^  London. 

1862 
September    29.     Eeappearance    in    New 
York. 

1863 
February  21.    Death,    of    Mary   Devlin 
Booth. 

September  21.  Took  management  of  Win- 
ter Grarden  Theatre,  "New  York. 

1864 
November  25.  Produced  ^^  Julins  Caesar'' 
at  Winter  Garden  Theatre  ;  Junius,  Ed- 
win, and  John  Wilkes  Booth  in  cast. 
November  26.    Produced    ^^ Hamlet''    at 
Winter  Garden  Theatre. 

1865 
March    22.     One    hundredth    night    of 
^* Hamlet"  at  Winter  Garden  Theatre. 
April  14.  Lincoln  assassinated  by  John 
Wilkes  Booth. 
Eetired  from  the  stage. 


CHEONOLOGY  xiii 

1866 
January  3.  Eeappeared  at  Winter  Gar- 
den Theatre,  as  Hamlet, 

1867 
January   22.     Presentation    of    Hamlet 
Medal. 

January  28.  Eevival  of  ^^The  Merchant 
of  Venice '*  at  Winter  Garden  Theatre. 
March  22-23.  Winter  Garden  Theatre 
destroyed  by  fire. 

1868 
April  8.    Corner-stone  of  Booth's  The- 
atre, [N'ew  York,  laid. 
November  3.  Appeared  in    ^^ Macbeth/' 
Boston  Theatre,  with  Mme.  Janauschek. 

1869 
February   3.     Booth's    Theatre    opened 
with  ^^Eomeo  and  Juliet." 
April  12.  Produced  ^^OtheUo." 
June    7.    Married    Miss    Mary   P.    M^- 
Yicker  of  Chicago. 

1871 
December  25.  Produced  ^^  Julius  Caesar" 
at  Booth's  Theatre. 


xiv  CHEOKOLOGY 

1873 
Eetired  from  management. 

1874 
Went  into  bankruptcy. 

1875 
March,  Eeleased  from  bankruptcy. 
Thrown  from  carriage  at  Cos- Cob,  Con- 
necticut ;  seriously  injured. 
October  25.  Eeappeared  in  IsTew  York,  at 
Fifth  Avenue  Theatre. 

1876 
January  S-March  3.    Successful  tour  of 
southern  states.     Eevisited  California. 
November  20.  Began  long  engagement  in 
New  York. 

1877-78 

Fifteen  volumes  of  Prompt-BooJcs  (Will- 
iam Winter,  editor)  published. 

1879 
April  23.  Mark  Gray's  attempt  to  assas- 
sinate Booth,  at  Chicago. 

1880 
April,    Appeared  as  Fetruchio,  Madison 


CHEOI^OLOGY  xv 

Square  Theatre,  ^ew  York,  for  benefit 
of  Poe  Memorial. 

June  15.  Booth  festival  at  Delmonico^s. 
June  30.  Sailed  for  England. 
November  6.  Appeared  at  Princess's  The- 
atre, London,  as  Samlet. 

1881 
Presented  ^'King  Lear.'' 
March  29.    Ended  season  at  Princess's 
Theatre,  London. 

May  2.  Appeared  at  Lyceum  Theatre, 
London,  as  Othello,  Henry  Irving  lago. 
October  3.  Eeappeared  in  New  York, 
Booth's  Theatre. 

November  13.  Death  of  Mary  M'Vicker 
Booth. 

1882 
May  31.  Sailed  for  England. 
June  25.  Eeappeared  at  Princess's  The- 
atre, London. 

1883 
January  11.  Appeared  at  Berlin. 
Tour  of  Germany. 

April  7.  Closed  tour  at  Vienna.  Ee- 
turned  to  America. 


xvi  CHEOl^OLOGY 

1885 
May  4t.  Delivered  address  at  dedication 
of  Poe  Memorial,  Metropolitan  Museum, 
iN'ew  York. 

May  7.  Appeared  in  ^^ Macbeth''  witli 
Mme.  Eistori  at  Academy  of  Music, 
I^ew  York. 

1886 
April  27-30  and  May  1.  Appeared  in 
^^ Hamlet''  and  ^^ Othello"  with  Salvini 
at  Academy  of  Music,  I^ew  York. 
Booth-Barrett  combination  formed. 

1887 
Delivered  address  at  dedication  of  Ac- 
tors' Monument,  Long  Island. 

1888 
May  21.  Appeared  as  Hamlet  at  testimo- 
nial benefit  for  Lester  Wallack,  Metro- 
politan Opera  House,  Kew  York. 
December  31.  Founded  The  Players. 

1889 
Mme.  Modjeska  joined  the  Booth-Bar- 
rett Company. 


CHEO:NOLOaY  xvii 

1889  (^continued) 
April  3.  Had  a  light  stroke  of  paralysis 
at  Eochester,  ^New  York. 

1891 
March  20.  Death  of  Lawrence  Barrett. 
April  4.  Last  appearance  on  the  stage, 
as  JEamlet 

1893 
June  7.  Edwin  Booth  died  at  The  Play- 
ers^ IsTew  York  City. 


EDWIN    BOOTH 


I 


EDWIN  BOOTH. 


Jumus  Brutus  Booth,  known  for 
many  years  in  this  country  as  ^Hhe  elder 
Booth/ ^  was  born  on  the  first  day  of 
May,  1796,  in  the  parish  of  St.  Pancras, 
London.  Through  his  grandmother, 
Elizabeth  Wilkes,  he  was  related  to  the 
famous  John  Wilke?i,-,  aaid, through  iiiis 
mother  he  came  of  a  W^lish  family  named 
Llewellyn.  Thu^s  bqfeji  'the  eldei*  ian4  .til^e/; 
younger  Booth  had  in  tliem  that  strain 
of  Celtic  blood  so  often  found  in  English 
actors,  artists,  and  writers.  ' '  The  Booths 
and  Wilkes  of  Clerkenwell,"  writes  Mrs. 
J.  S.  Clarke  in  her  memoir  of  her  father, 
^^  were  honourably  known  in  their  time  ; 
the  house  of  Bishop  Burnet,  an  historical 
old  building,  was  the  birthplace  of  many 
of  the  Booths,  and  the  yard  of  the  an- 
cient church  of  St.  John  of  Jerusalem 
still  contains  the  gravestones  of  their  de- 
scendants, on  which  the   names  of  the 


2  EDWm  BOOTH 

two  families  are  frequently  intermingled. 
Euin  and  demolition  have  been  busy, 
the  black  mould  of  years  is  over  the  nar- 
row streets  and  by-ways ;  but  the  little 
court  keeps  its  name  of  ^  Booth/  and  the 
graves  in  the  narrow  slip  of  church- 
ground  seem  likely  to  last  till  dooms- 
day.'' 

Eichard,  the  father  of  J.  B.  Booth, 
was  educated  for  the  law  ;  but  his  devo- 
tion to  a  profession  more  firmly  attached 
Vc  i6  })te^dsB:b :  thaw  any  other  —  except 
perhaps  that  of  his  son  and  grandsons  — 
was  not  enough  to  keep  him  from  be- 
coming a  red  Eepublican  and  resolving 
to  fight  for  England's  American  colonies 
against  the  mother-country.  After  be- 
ing taken  prisoner  and  brought  back  to 
England,  Booth  addressed  himself  to 
study,  and  the  practice  of  law.  Al- 
though he  seems  not  to  have  been 
punished  for  his  disloyalty,  a  freely 
proclaimed  republicanism  kept  him  un- 
popular.     Eichard    Booth's    rule    that 


EDWIN  BOOTH  3 

everyone  who  entered  his  Bloomsbury 
drawing-room  should  bow  before  a  por- 
trait of  Washington  that  hung  there, 
was  probably  the  most  whimsical  mani- 
festation of  his  principles.  Clearly  in- 
dicative of  these  were  also  the  names  of 
his  two  sons,  Junius  Brutus  and  Alger- 
non Sidney. 

After  a  brief  rivalry  with  Kean,  J.  B. 
Booth  came  to  try  his  fortune  in  the  new 
world,  where  he  was  long  and  widely 
known  for  his  great  genius  and  even 
greater  eccentricity.  On  the  eighteenth 
of  January,  1821,  he  had  married  Mary 
Anne  Holmes,  and  the  same  year  found 
them  at  Norfolk,  Virginia.  The  young 
actor's  gifts  and  oddities  were  combined 
with  a  strong  desire  for  a  quiet  country 
life  when  he  was  not  acting.  So,  after 
a  number  of  brilliant  engagements,  in 
the  summer  of  1822  he  bought  a  farm 
in  Harford  County,  Maryland,  twenty- 
five  miles  from  Baltimore.  He  passed 
much  time  there,  and  there  his  six  sons 
and  four  daughters  were  born. 


4  EDWIN  BOOTH 

Known  always  as  ^^The  Farm,''  tMs 
estate  was  really  a  wood,  tliree  miles 
from  eacli  of  tliree  small  villages  —  Bel- 
air,  Hickory,  and  Churchville.  Over 
the  stony  coacli-road,  tkrough  an  arch  of 
great  trees,  the  post-boy,  with  his  horn 
and  mail-bags,  used  to  ride  once  a  week, 
and  toss  the  Booths'  letters  and  papers 
over  their  gate.  The  house  was  a  quar- 
ter of  a  mile  from  the  gate,  by  a  narrow, 
crooked  path.  The  house,  it  should  be 
said,  was  no  more  than  a  log-cabin,  as 
innocent  of  locks  and  bolts  as  if  it  had 
been  in  Arcadia.  The  square  window- 
frames  and  broad  shutters  of  the  cabin  — 
which  was  plastered  and  whitewashed  on 
the  outside  —  were  painted  red.  ^  ^  Four 
rooms  besides  the  loffc,  the  kitchen,  and 
the  Old  Dominion  chimney,  made  up 
a  picturesque  and  comfortable  abode, 
standing  in  a  clearing  encompassed  by 
huge  oak,  black  walnut,  beech,  and  tu- 
lip trees."  Booth  caused  his  cabin  to  be 
removed  across  several  fields,  in  order  to 


EDWm  BOOTH  6 

bring  it  near  an  excellent  spring  whicli 
he  had  discovered  under  the  thickest 
trees.  These  were  left  standing,  and  the 
spring  was  furnished  with  granite  ledges 
and  steps.  ^^  In  its  grateful  depths/' 
continues  Mrs.  Clarke,  ^^  dwelt  an  im- 
mense green  bull-frog  ;  and  as  these  creat- 
ures are  said  to  live  a  hundred  years, 
the  children  of  the  family  used  to  imag- 
ine that  he  had  croaked  to  the  first 
invaders  of  his  solitude  as  he  did  to 
them.  In  this  shaded  spot  a  little  dairy 
was  built,  and  the  thoughtful  possessor 
planted  in  front  of  his  door  a  cherry- 
shoot,  anticipating  the  future  when 
his  children  should  gather  under  its 
branches.  Those  days  came  in  their 
time,  and  his  tall  sons  swung  themselves 
up  among  its  great  boughs,  to  read  or 
doze  away  many  a  sultry  afternoon. 
Merry  groups  gossiped  under  its  shelter, 
little  ones  danced  there,  while  older  ones 
dreamed,  and  reared  airy  castles ;  the 
aged  mother  in  her  widowhood  remem- 


6  EDWIK  BOOTH 

bered  happier  days  in  its  shadows  ;  and 
every  year  the  orioles  and  mocking-birds 
paid  their  welcome  visits.  This  grand 
old  grafted  tree  was  very  tall  and 
straight,  and  shaded  the  entire  lawn.'' 

In  his  green  clearing,  circled  by  un- 
broken forest  as  far  as  the  eye  could 
reach,  the  Farmer  —  the  world  forget- 
ting, though  not  by  the  world  forgot  — 
planted  a  large  orchard,  and  had  negro 
quarters,  barns,  and  stables,  built. 
Among  other  necessities  added  to  the 
Farm,  were  a  vineyard,  a  cider-press, 
and  a  fishing  stream  :  among  its  luxuries 
was  a  swimming-pond,  with  a  little 
willow-grown  island. 

In  a  few  years,  when  it  became  neces- 
sary to  provide  for  the  dead  as  well  as 
for  the  living,  a  little  graveyard  was 
railed  in.  With  true  Southern  refusal 
to  join  in  death  those  who  in  life  were  so 
far  asunder.  Booth  buried  black  mem- 
bers of  his  large  household  outside  of 
the  enclosure,  which  was  shaded  with 


EDWm  BOOTH  7 

Jewish  althea  bushes,  yews,  and  weeping 
willows.  The  white  dead  were  laid  with- 
in the  rails.  As  clergymen  were  usually 
no  nearer  than  the  rest  of  civilisation, 
the  owner  of  all  this  seclusion  often  found 
it  a  part  of  his  duty  to  read  the  burial 
service. 

Within  the  cabin  the  master  of  it 
typified  his  two  fold  life  by  keeping  in 
one  file  the  numbers  of  a  weekly  paper 
on  farming,  and  in  another,  playbills. 
Incidents  and  pleasures  of  the  farm  life 
he  minutely  described  in  a  note-book, 
along  with  passages  from  plays,  memo- 
randa of  dresses  and  properties,  stage 
directions,  births  and  deaths  of  children, 
astronomical  observations,  fast  days,  and 
lastly  a  few  verses. 

On  the  Actor-Farmer's  few  but  catho- 
lic book-shelves,  stood  volumes  of  Shel- 
ley, Coleridge,  and  Keats  —  new  poets 
then  —  a  Gazetteer  of  the  World,  an 
English  and  a  French  dictionary,  Ea- 
cine,  Alfieri,  Tasso,  Dante,  Burton's  An- 


8  EDWm  BOOTH 

atomy  of  Melancholy ^  Plutarch's  Morals 
and  lAves^  Milton,  Shakespeare,  the 
Koran  (by  which  the  elder  Booth  set 
great  store),  Locke's  Essay  on  the  Suman 
Understanding  J  and  Paley's  Theology. 

On  the  parlour  walls  hung  three  en- 
gravings —  ^  ^  Timon  of  Athens, ' '  ^  ^  The 
Eoman  Matron  showing  her  Husband 
how  to  Die/'  and  ^^The  Death  of  Bona- 
parte," ^^with  these  words  written  in 
the  clouds,  ^T^te  d'Armee.' "  The 
furniture  of  the  cabin,  though  simple 
and  rough,  was  of  a  sort  that  is  looked 
upon  with  increasing  interest  and  affec- 
tion. The  corner  cupboard,  full  of  old- 
fashioned  china ;  a  narrow  looking- 
glass,  with  the  sun  and  moon  (in  the 
guise  of  human  faces)  painted  on  the 
upper  half;  the  spinning  wheel j  the 
tall  brass  andirons  and  fender  —  all 
these  objects,  even  without  the  particu- 
lar association,  would  be  cherished  as 
household  reminders  of  former  times. 
The  old  Herbalist  and  Almanack,  side 


EDWm  BOOTH  9 

by  side  on  the  wall,  the  ink-horn,  bunch 
of  quills,  and  little  bags  of  seeds,  hung 
from  hooks  round  the  looking-glass, 
added  harmonious  details  to  a  picture 
strangely  contrasted  with  the  scenes  in 
which  the  world  thinks  of  the  elder  and 
the  younger  Booth.  The  family  bread 
was  baked  in  a  Dutch  oven,  the  family 
meals  eaten  from  immense  pewter  plat- 
ters, which  were  used  in  later  days  as 
covers  to  the  milk- crocks  in  the  dairy. 
A  rigid  vegetarianism  was  practised  on 
the  Farm.  '  ^  Mr.  Booth  usually  travelled 
from  Harford  County  to  Baltimore  and 
to  Eichmond  in  his  carryall  with  two 
horses  —  ^  Captain,^  a  very  large  animal, 
and  the  favourite  but  diminutive  '  Pea- 
cock,' ''  a  piebald  pony  bought  on  the 
island  of  Madeira. 

It  has  seemed  worth  while  to  recite  all 
these  details  of  Edwin  Booth's  first  home, 
not  only  for  their  interest,  but  because 
they  were  so  very  different  from  every- 
thing in  and  about  his  last  home,  the 


10  EDWIN  BOOTH 

Players'  Club  in  New  York.  Between 
the  two,  we  have  only  the  most  general 
record  of  any  of  his  abodes. 

A  word  or  two  as  to  the  physical 
aspect  of  father  and  son  will  be  a  further 
help  to  most  readers.  The  father  was 
short,  spare,  and  sinewy.  He  had  the 
head  of  a  Greek,  the  chest  of  an  athlete, 
and  a  face  of  the  pallor  often  though  not 
always  seen  in  scholars.  His  hair  was 
dark,  and  his  eyes  blue-grey.  His  voice 
ranged  from  organ  to  flute.  Mr.  Joseph 
Jefferson's  brief  description  of  his  acting, 
to  be  found  in  the  Autobiography,  is  worth 
most  of  the  many  others  scattered  through 
books  of  reminiscence  and  criticism. 
^^When  but  twenty-two  years  of  age,'' 
says  Mr.  Jefferson,  ^^I  was  cast  for 
Marrall  in  ^A  New  Way  to  Pay  Old 
Debts,'  the  elder  Booth  playing  Sir  Giles 
Overreach,  .  .  .  The  elder  Booth's  act- 
ing of  Sir  Giles  was  indeed  something  to 
be  remembered.  During  the  last  scene 
he  beats  Marrall,  who  hides  for  protec- 


EDWUsT  BOOTH  11 

tion  behind  Lord  LoveJl,  Booth's  face, 
when  he  found  he  could  not  reach  his 
victim,  had  the  look  of  an  uncaged  tiger. 
His  eyes  flashed  and  seemed  to  snap  with 
fire ;  his  nostrils  dilated ;  his  cheeks 
appeared  to  quiver ;  his  half-opened 
mouth,  with  its  thin  lips  pressed  tightly 
against  the  white  teeth,  made  a  picture 
of  anger  fearful  to  look  upon.  At  the 
point  where  he  is  about  to  draw  his 
sword  his  arm  shakes,  his  right  hand 
refuses  to  do  its  ofi&ce,  and,  stricken  with 
paralysis,  he  stands  the  embodiment  of 
despair  ;  then  come  his  terrible  words  of 
anguish  and  self-reproach : 

^  Some  undone  widow  sits  upon  mine  arm, 

my  sword. 

Glued  to  my  scabbard,  with  wronged 
orphans'  tears.' 

His  whole  frame,  shaken  with  convul- 
sions, seems  to  collapse,  his  head  sinks 
upon  his  breast,  his  jaw  drops,  and  the 
cruel  man  is  dead.     There  was  no  ap- 


12  EDWIN  BOOTH 

plause  the  niglit  I  speak  of ;  the  acting 
was  so  intense  and  so  natural  that  the 
mimic  scenes  seemed  really  to  have  hap- 
pened. ' '  We  have  all  sat  through  scenes 
followed  by  no  applause,  though  not  for 
the  reason  given  by  Mr.  Jefferson.  But 
the  audiences  of  half  a  century  ago  and 
more  were  either  more  impressionable 
than  those  of  to-day,  or  else,  as  the  sur- 
vivors af&rm,  they  had  better  reason  for 
being  impressed.  Certain  it  is  that  Mrs. 
Siddons  and  Kean  and  the  elder  Booth 
had  a  power  over  their  houses  that  even 
Salvini  has  not  exercised  in  our  own 
time. 

It  is  also  clear  that  in  bodily  pres- 
ence the  elder  Booth  was  more  impos- 
ing, though  not  more  brilliant,  than 
the  younger.  Yet  there  was  a  resem- 
blance between  them  —  a  resemblance 
that  showed  itself  mainly  in  the  shape 
of  head  and  face  ;  in  the  arch  of  eye- 
brow, ^Hhe  actor's  feature''  for  which 
both  men  were  notable  ;  and  in  a  mo- 


EDWI]^  BOOTH  13 

bility  and  positive  radiance  of  face  that 
were  among  Edwin  Booth's  most  beauti- 
ful endowments.  His  eyes  were  dark 
brown,  and  so  full  of  light  that  boys  and 
girls  often  kept  the  look  of  them  as 
almost  the  sole  recollection  of  plays  in 
which  they  had  seen  him.  I,  for  one, 
saw  Booth's  Shylock  at  a  very  early  age  ; 
and  for  years  after,  I  remember,  the 
Jew  to  me  was  nothing  but  a  pair  of 
eyes,  large,  dark,  awful,  and  bright  — 
above  all,  bright,  and  seeming  to  give 
out  light.  In  the  opinion  of  Mr.  Will- 
iam Winter,  ^^only  one  man  of  our  time 
has  equalled  Edwin  Booth  in  this  sin- 
gular splendour  of  countenance — the 
great  IS'ew  England  orator  Eufus  Choate. 
Had  Choate  been  an  actor  upon  the 
stage  —  as  he  was  before  a  jury  —  with 
those  terrible  eyes  of  his,  and  that  pas- 
sionate Arab  face,  he  must  have  towered 
fully  to  the  height  of  the  tradition  of 
George  Frederick  Cooke."  In  poise, 
grace,  and  swiftness  of  motion,  for  which 


14  EDWm  BOOTH 

tlie  elder  Booth  was  famous,  neither  he 
nor  any  one  could  well  have  surpassed 
his  son.  Of  the  middle  height  and  size, 
the  younger  Booth  was  closely  knit  and 
admirably  proportioned.  His  physical 
command  of  himself  recalled  the  Ger- 
man traveller's  note  that  Garrick  seemed 
all  right  hand,  so  that  within  Booth's 
easy  achievement  were  the  march  of 
Othello,  lago^s  leopard  tread,  and  the 
tottering  majesty  of  Lear.  His  voice, 
although  a  little  ^^ veiled'' — at  least  in 
later  years  —  ranged  wide  and  carried 
far.  Its  sweetness  and  strength  spoke  to 
the  inner  even  more  than  to  the  outer 
ear.  It  stirred  not  only  the  blood  but 
the  spirit. 


IL 

The  youth  of  this  rare  person  was 
schooled  by  constant  association  with  a 
man  of  genius,  and  saddened  by  his 
strange,  almost  mad  perversities.  But 
in  forming  an  artist  and  disciplining  a 
character,  the  privilege  of  being  son  to 
the  elder  Booth  far  outweighed  the  fre- 
quent penalty  of  acting  as  his  guardian. 

Edwin  Thomas  Booth  —  Edwin  after 
Edwin  Forrest  —  was  born  at  the  Mary- 
land farm  on  ISTovember  13,  1833.  The 
negroes  said  he  was  ^^born  lucky''  and 
^^ gifted  to  see  ghosts,''  because  there  was 
a  brilliant  shower  of  meteors  on  the  night 
of  the  boy's  birth,  and  because  he  was 
born  with  a  caul.  His  first  recollection 
of  his  father  was  of  their  having  travelled 
a  whole  day  together  and  reaching  the 
Farm  late  at  night,  under  the  dark  trees. 
A  man  who  had  come  with  them  to  take 
back  the  hired  horses  they  had  ridden, 
went  away  into  the  night;   and  Booth 


16  EDWm  BOOTH 

lifted  his  little  son  over  the  snake-fence 
into  the  grass,  saying  as  he  did  so  — 
"Your  foot  is  on  your  native  heath.'' 

The  boy's  education  began  under  Miss 
Susan  Hyde,  who  taught  the  rudiments 
to  boys  and  girls.  Miss  Hyde,  who 
afterward  became  secretary  of  the  Pea- 
body  Institute  in  Baltimore,  was  always 
affectionately  remembered  by  her  most 
distinguished  pupil.  Somewhat  later, 
Booth  sent  his  son  to  an  old  Frenchman, 
a  West-Indian  naval  officer,  M.  Louis 
Dugas.  He  went  —  probably  for  a  very 
short  time  —  to  ^^  a  university  "  which 
Mrs.  Clarke  does  not  name  ;  and  studied 
intermittently  with  a  Mr.  Kearney,  who 
wrote  all  his  own  school-books.  Kear- 
ney encouraged  his  boys  to  act  scenes 
from  plays,  and  on  one  occasion  the 
elder  Booth,  sitting  on  the  corner  of  a 
bench  near  the  door,  was  an  unseen 
and  a  gratified  witness  of  the  quarrel 
between  Brutus  and  Cassius^  recited  with 
gestures  by  Edwin  Booth  and  John  S. 


EDWIK  BOOTH  17     } 

Clarke,  whose  delightful  art  afterward  led  '■ 
him  quite  away  from  tragedy.  The 
young  Eomans  wore  white  linen  trousers 
and  black  jackets,  then  the  fashion.  \ 
Mr.  J.  H.  Hewitt,  of  Baltimore,  remem- 
bered Edwin  as  ^^a  comely  lad  ... 
dressed  in  a  Spanish  cloak.'' 

A  varied  education  was   made    still 
more  fragmentary  by  periodical  trips, 
on  which  Edwin  Booth  had  the  respon- 
sible task  of  caring  for  the  health  and 
even  the  safety  of  his  father.     In  Louis-     ; 
ville,  to  give  one  example  of  the  sort  of      s 
thing  that  often  happened,  Booth  had     i 
on  a  certain  night  been  playing  Bichard     ' 
III  with  great  brilliancy.     On  the  way     \ 
to  his  hotel  he  suddenly  determined  to     | 
walk  the  streets  alone.     When  he  found     ! 
that  Edwin  would  not  leave  him,   he     \ 
went  rapidly  to  a  long  covered  market, 
in  which  he  began   to  walk    up    and 
down.      The  promenade,   from  end  to 
end  of  the  market,  did  not  cease  until 
daylight.     Now  hastening,  now  lagging. 


18  EDWIN  BOOTH 

the  father  could  not  shake  off  his  son, 
who  —  sometimes  angry,  sometimes  ready 
to  laugh,  and  always  weary  —  kept  his 
father^  s  changing  pace  until  morning 
moved  Booth  to  go  home  to  bed.  During 
the  whole  time  neither  had  spoken  a 
word. 

It  is  not  strange  that  such  experiences 
as  these  should  have  made  a  sensitive 
youth  grave  beyond  his  years  ;  or  that 
more  painful  demands  upon  his  patience 
and  courage,  with  no  anodyne  of  the  ab- 
surd, should  have  deepened  his  inherited 
melancholy.  The  noble  motto  of  the 
noble  Italian  house,  ^^  Though  sad,  I  am 
strong, ' '  might  well  have  been  this  boy' s. 
And  at  only  one  moment  of  later  life,  in 
the  disaster  that  almost  crushed  him, 
could  he  have  felt  its  sadness  or  needed 
its  strength  more  than  in  the  early,  hard 
probation  of  being  attendant,  dresser, 
and  guardian,  to  a  man  whose  genius  was 
not  without  its  authenticating  strain  of 
madness. 


EDWIN  BOOTH  19 

In  spite  of  all  this  association  with  the 
theatre,  the  actor's  son  saw  little  of  its 
processes.  His  father  intended  him  to 
be  a  cabinet-maker.  ^^  During  my  con- 
stant attendance  on  him  in  the  thea- 
tre''—  says  Edwin  Booth  in  ^^Some 
Words  about  my  Father" — ^^he  for- 
bade my  quitting  his  dressing-room  — 
where  he  supposed  my  school-lessons 
were  studied.  But  the  idle  boy,  ignor- 
ing Lindley  Murray  and  such  small  deer, 
seldom  seeing  the  actors,  listened  at  the 
keyhole  to  the  garbled  text  of  the  mighty 
dramatists,  as  given  in  the  acting  ver- 
sions of  the  plays.  By  this  means  at  an 
early  age  my  memory  became  stored 
with  the  words  of  all  the  parts  of  every 
play  in  which  my  father  performed." 
It  is  common  knowledge  that  the  loss 
of  one  sense  often  sharpens  the  others. 
Who  shall  say  that  so  much  hearing 
without  seeing,  did  not  tune  the  listen- 
er's ear,  and  train  unconsciously  the 
tongue  that  was  afterward  to  rob  the 
Hybla  bees'? 


20  EDWIN  BOOTH 

iN'ot  only  was  the  boy  forbidden  to  see 
plays,  but  he  seldom  heard  his  father 
speak  of  actors  or  the  theatre.  Only 
once,  indeed,  was  he  allowed  to  hear  any 
of  the  elder  Booth's  recollections  of  the 
stage.  This  was  on  an  occasion  when, 
after  reading  ^  ^  Coriolanus "  to  his  son 
^^  until  far  into  the  morning,  he  spoke 
of  the  marvellous  acting  of  Edmund 
Kean." 

Clearly  enough,  however,  Edwin 
Booth's  hereditary  talent,  his  delphic 
association  with  the  theatre,  his  strange 
responsibilities,  and  the  grotesque  con- 
trasts of  his  life,  were  hurrying  the  neg- 
lectful grammar-student  into  a  closer 
walk  with  ^Hhe  mighty  dramatists''  to 
whom  he  had  hearkened  so  attentively. 
Yet,  when  he  made  his  first  appearance 
on  any  stage,  it  was  by  accident,  and  — 
characteristically  enough  —  to  do  some 
one  a  kindness.  Mr.  Thoman,  who 
doubled  the  parts  of  prompter  and  actor, 
was  attending  to  some  detail  in  prepara- 


EDWIN  BOOTH  21 

tion  for  the  elder  Booth's  Eichard  III 
at  the  Boston  Museum.  Suddenly  he 
turned  to  Edwin,  who  was  standing  by, 
and  exclaimed:  —  ^^This  is  too  much 
work  for  one  man ;  you  ought  to  play 
TresseV^  The  boy  consented,  and,  when 
the  night  of  the  play  came  —  it  was  Sep- 
tember 10,  1849  —  he  was  called  to  his 
father's  dressing-room.  Booth,  dressed 
for  Eichard,  then  catechised  his  son  as 
if  the  two  had  been  teacher  and  pupil : 

^  ^  ^  Who  was  Tressel  1 ' 

^^^A  messenger  from  the  field  of 
Tewkesbury.' 

^^  ^  What  was  his  mission  ^ ' 

^^  ^  To  bear  the  news  of  the  defeat  of  the 
king's  party.' 

^^  ^How  did  he  make  the  journey?  ' 

^^  ^  On  horseback.' 

^'  ^  Where  are  your  spurs  ? ' 

^^ Edwin  glanced  quickly  down"  — 
he  had  doubtless  told  the  story  more  than 
once  to  Mrs.  Clarke,  from  whose  account 
the  dialogue  is  taken — ^^and  said  he 
had  not  thought  of  them. 


22  EDWIK  BOOTH 

^'  ^Here,  take  mine.' 

^^  Edwin  unbuckled  his  father's  spurs, 
and  fastened  them  on  his  own  boots. 
His  part  being  ended  on  the  stage,  he 
found  his  father  still  sitting  in  the  dress- 
ing-room, apparently  engrossed  in 
thought. 

^^  ^  Have  you  done  well  ? '  he  asked. 

^^  ^I  think  so,'  replied  Edwin. 

^^^Give  me  my  spurs,'  rejoined  his 
father,  and  obediently  young  Tressel 
replaced  the  spurs  upon  Gloucester's 
feet." 

The  only  copy  of  the  bill  of  this  per- 
formance which  is  known  to  be  in  exist- 
ence, was  given  by  the  actor  of  Tressel 
to  the  Players'  Club,  where  it  hangs  in 
the  dining-room. 

What  followed  the  performance  is  no 
less  interesting  than  what  preceded.  By 
that  time  the  Eoman  father  had  softened. 
^^  After  my  debut  in  the  very  small  part 
of  Tressel '^ — wrote  the  son  almost  forty 
years  later — ^^he  ^coddled'  me;  gave 


EDWIN  BOOTH  23 

me  gruel  (his  usual  meal  at  night,  when 
acting)  and  made  me  don  his  worsted 
night- cap,  which  when  his  work  was 
ended  he  always  wore  as  a  protection  for 
his  heated  head,  to  prevent  me  from 
taking  cold  after  my  labours,  which 
were  doubtless  very  exhausting  on  that 
occasion,  being  confined  to  one  brief 
scene  at  the  beginning  of  the  play !  " 

In  the  next  summer  Edwin  Booth 
made  a  more  ambitious  trial  of  his 
wings,  though  in  a  more  secluded  scene 
—  the  court-house  at  Belair.  There,  on 
the  evening  of  August  2,  Mr.  Edwin 
Booth  and  Mr.  J.  S.  Clarke  gave 
^^Shakespearian  Eeadings,  Etc."  The 
former's  part  of  the  programme  included 
selections  from  ^^Eichard  III,''  ^^The 
Merchant  of  Venice,''  and  ^'  Eichelieu  "5 
^^ Hamlet's  Soliloquy  on  Death"  ;  and 
^^The  Celebrated  Dagger  Scene  from 
Macbeth."  The  young  men  slackened 
the  tension  with  ^^  Etc.,"  for  ^^ during 
the  evening  they  sang  a  number  of  negro 


24  EDWIN  BOOTH 

melodies  with  blackened  faces,  using 
appropriate  dialect,  and  accompanying 
their  vocal  attempts  with  the  somewhat 
inharmonious  banjo  and  bones.''  Those 
fragments  of  Shakespeare,  recited  half  a 
century  ago  in  the  Maryland  woods,  were 
probably  ardent  and  faithful  imitations 
of  the  elder  Booth,  but  the  imagination 
can  paint  no  picture  of  his  son  as  Brother 
Bones.  Neither  he  nor  any  of  his  fam- 
ily—  on  the  stage,  at  all  events  —  ever 
^     had  the  giffc  of  making  people  laugh. 


III. 

DuEiNa  Booth's  second  season  on  the 
stage,  that  of  1851,  he  played  again  in 
^^Eichard  III/'  but  this  time  as  Eich- 
ard  himself,  at  the  l^ational  Theatre, 
^N^ew  York.  In  his  opinion  his  father 
had  determined  to  test  his  ^ Equality.'' 
His  own  account  of  the  experiment  is 
worth  reading.  ^^One  evening,  just  as 
he  [the  elder  Booth]  should  have  started 
for  the  theatre  to  prepare  for  his  per- 
formance of  Eichard  III,  he  feigned  ill- 
ness 5  nor  would  he  leave  the  bed  where 
he  had  been  napping  (his  custom  always 
in  the  afternoon),  but  told  me  to  go  and 
act  Eichard  for  him.  This  amazed  me, 
for  my  experience  as  yet  had  been  con- 
fined to  minor  parts.  But  he  could  not 
be  coaxed  to  waver  from  his  determina- 
tion not  to  act  that  night,  and  as  it  was 
time  for  the  manager  to  be  notified,  there 
was  no  course  to  pursue  but  to  go  to  the 
theatre  to  announce  the  fact.     ^Well/ 


26  EDWIN  BOOTH 

exclaimed  the  manager,  ^  there  is  no  time 
to  change  the  bill  5  we  must  close  the 
house  —  unless  you  will  act  the  part.' 
The  stage- director  and  several  actors  pres- 
ent urged  me  to  try  it,  and,  before  my 
brain  had  recovered  from  its  confusion, 
they  hurried  me  into  my  father's  dress, 
and  on  to  the  stage,  in  a  state  of  bewil- 
derment.'' Someone  heard  the  novice 
repeat  the  soliloquy,  and  he  was  soon  be- 
fore a  crowded  house.  As  no  explana- 
tion had  been  made,  the  son  was  greeted 
with  a  great  round  of  applause  intended 
for  the  father.  As  soon  as  the  audience 
discovered  their  mistake,  they  lapsed 
into  utter  silence  and  allowed  the  piece 
to  begin.  Although  the  difficultly 
placed  young  actor  played  as  he  had 
seen  his  father  play,  in  look  and  tone 
and  gesture,  his  achievement  was  some- 
thing more  than  even  the  best  of  imita- 
tions, for  the  suddenly  interrupted  ap- 
plause soon  began  again,  and  in  a  key 
which  must  have  assured  the  performer 


EDWm  BOOTH  27 

that  lie  had  won  it  for  himself.  He  thus 
modestly  concludes  his  own  too  brief  ac- 
count of  the  episode: — ^^My  effort  was 
not  altogether  futile,  for  it  satisfied  my 
father  that  his  boy's  prospects  were  fair 
for,  at  least,  a  reputable  position  in  the 
profession.  .  .  .  Thenceforth  he  made  no 
great  objection  to  my  acting  occasionally 
with  him,  although  he  never  gave  me 
instruction,  professional  advice  or  en- 
couragement in  any  form :  he  had, 
doubtless,  resolved  to  make  me  work  my 
way  unaided ;  and  though  his  seeming 
indifference  was  painful  then,  it  com- 
pelled me  to  exercise  my  callow  wits  ; 
it  made  me  think  !  And  for  this  he  has 
ever  had  my  dearest  gratitude." 

The  character  of  Gloster  has  always 
been  a  favourite  with  actors.  It  is  no 
wonder,  since  whoever  wrote  the  play  — 
let  us  for  convenience  say  Shakespeare  — 
could  not  easily  have  done  them  a  better 
service.  Against  a  necessary  background 
of  persons  dramatically  insignificant,  and 


28  EDWIK  BOOTH 

the  undramatic  lamentation  of  queens 
and  other  distressed  ladies  of  rank,  who 
repeat  one  another  as  only  Maeterlinck's 
people  do  nowadays,  the  author  has 
thrown  in  dominant  relief  a  figure  of  gi- 
gantic evil,  an  all-conquering  fiend  in 
gorgeous  raiment.  We  cannot  recapture 
the  old  performances  of  Gloster  or  the  de- 
light the  old  audiences  felt  in  them,  nor 
have  we  better  means  of  recovering  Ed- 
win Booth's  early  renderings  of  the  part 
in  Gibber's  theatrical  patchwork  called 
'  ^  Eichard  III. ' '  The  effectiveness  of  that 
version  is  of  the  sort  which  perpetually 
tempts  the  actor  to  over-act.  As  Booth 
ripened  late,  it  is  probable  that,  in  his 
younger,  cruder  state,  he  was  a  brill- 
iantly docile  pupil  of  a  school  not 
averse  to  violent  effects.  By  the  time  I 
saw  him,  although  there  was  still  (and 
continued  till  the  end  to  be)  an  ever- 
lessening  degree  of  old-fashioned  theat- 
ricality in  all  his  impersonations,  he  sel- 
dom, even  in    ^^ Eichard  III,"    played 


EDWm  BOOTH  29 

obviously  for  points.  Gibber,  and  all 
that  Gibber  typified,  had  long  since  been 
discarded.  Booth's  version  of  the  orig- 
inal would  have  been  still  better  than  it 
was,  had  he  taken  the  pioneer  step,  not 
yet  taken,  I  think,  of  omitting  BicharWs 
proposal  to  Queen  Elizabeth^  which  comes 
like  a  faded  echo  of  the  direct  proposal 
to  the  Lady  Anne.  But  that  is  a  detail, 
though  an  important  one. 

Booth's  dressing  of  the  character  — 
splendid,  as  Gloster^s  apparel  is  known 
to  have  been  —  proclaimed  the  man  he 
represented.  He  wore  long  brown  hair, 
cut  straight  across  the  forehead,  and  a 
ring  on  the  third  finger  of  his  left  hand. 
He  reproduced  the  king's  habit  of 
sheathing  and  unsheathing  his  dagger. 
The  hump  was  a  suggestion,  not  an  ob- 
trusion, of  deformity.  This  Eichard  had 
^^entertained  a  score  or  two  of  tailors" 
not  only  ^Ho  study  fashions  to  adorn  his 
body,''  but  also  to  conceal  the  ill  turn 
Nature  had  done  him,  and  leave  him  a 


30  EDWra  BOOTH 

monster  solely  in  his  mind.  Even  the 
moral  hump  was  not  obtruded.  Booth 
remembered  Bichard*  s  ' '  dissembling 
looks"  as  well  as  ^Hhe  plain  devil" 
that  rejoiced  within  him,  but  was  never 
fully  revealed  except  where  the  text  de- 
manded it.  Some  modern  actors,  follow- 
ing tradition,  have  made  Richard  confide 
too  much  in  the  audience.  The  audi- 
ence got  no  direct  information  from 
Booth  except  in  the  asides  and  the  solilo- 
quies, which  thus  of  course  gained  all  the 
more  by  contrast.  BicharWs  many  en- 
trances, most  of  them  unreasonably  well 
timed,  gave  Booth  an  opportunity  that 
he  richly  used,  of  showing  the  apparent 
omnipresence  of  strong  evil.  A  cheer- 
ful, brisk  malignant,  he  strode  here, 
there,  and  everywhere,  about  the  stage, 
speaking  and  acting  the  lines  in  such  a 
way  as  to  show  that  the  villain's  life- 
work  was  his  pleasure  not  less  than  his 
business.  Into  his  smiling  seduction  of 
the  Lady  Anne  he  put  enough  of  the  ser- 


EDWIN  BOOTH  31 

pent  to  bedevil  any  daughter  of  Eve  and 
rouse  cynical  thoughts  in  the  sons  of 
Adam.  I,  for  one,  don't  believe  the 
scene  when  I  read  it ;  but  Booth's  act- 
ing, if  he  was  in  the  mood  —  for  he  was  i 
the  most  unequal  of  players  —  compelled 
belief  until  the  episode  was  over.  His 
bits  of  hypocrisy  were  delicious,  and 
of  an  intellectual  keenness  that  always 
drew  smiles  and  a  ripple  of  appreciation 
from  the  audience.  I^othing  in  this  kind 
could  be  better  than  the  mock-humility 
with  which  Booth's  Eichard  knelt  and 
asked  the  Duchesses  blessing,  unless  in- 
deed it  were  the  fine  insolence  with 
which  he  spoke  the  lines  that  follow  the 
poor  lady's  ^^God  bless  thee"  :  — 

^^  Amen  !     And  make  me  die  a  good  old 
man : 
That  is  the  butt  end   of  a  mother's 

blessing : 
I  marvel  why  her  grace  did  leave  it 
out." 

This  light  treatment  of  so  much  that 


32  EDWm  BOOTH 

most  Richards  have  treated  heavily,  was 
not  only  right  in  itself,  but  it  contrasted 
sharply  with  the  sudden  thunder  of  the 
sentence  pronounced  on  Hastings,  with 
.  the  threat  against  Stanley ,  g^nd  with  the 
lowering  tone  and  look  Booth  gave  to 
that  most  royal  snub  :  — 

^'Thou  troublest  me;   I  am  not  in  the 
dWn'*^  vein.'' 

Many  critics  have  praised,  and  praised 
highly.  Booth's  rendering  of  the  dream 
and  the  soliloquy  that  follows  it.  As  I 
remember  this  part  of  the  performance, 
his  mode  of  giving  the  soliloquy  was 
a  blot  on  an  achievement  made  up  of 
many  perfections.  The  restraint,  the 
tempered  art  of  previous  scenes,  gave 
way  here  to  a  flaming  theatricality  that 
gravely  hurt  —  though  it  could  not  de- 
stroy—  the  actor's  consciousness  and 
vivid  revelation  of  BicharWs  tortured 
soul.  In  all  of  the  same  scene  that  pre- 
cedes the  dream.  Booth  was  altogether 


.V' 

ED Wm   BOOTS  33 

admirable.  The  dim  light  in  the  tent 
and  the  muffled  drum  withoat,  conspired 
with  his  gloomy  fitfulness  and  his  sombre 
voice  in  the  few  words  given  him.  to 
send  out  among  all  the  spectators  a  m  -- 
sage  of  foreboding  —  a  feeling  that  the  '  i 
king  foresaw  his  doom.     The  line, 

j 
'^Stir  with  the  lark  tomorrow,  gentle 
I^orfolk,'^ 

Booth  spoke  resolutely,  yet  with  a  curi-    i 
ous  sweetness  and  melancholy,  and  as  if    \ 
he  already  tasted  the  morning  of  his  de-    ] 
feat.     The  fight  and  the  fall  were  pro- 
digious. ! 
As  a  part  of  Booth's  general  concep-    ' 
tion  —  a  conception  in  which  the  hump 
and  the  limp  were  minimised  —  it  should 
be  remembered  that  he  always  repre- 
sented Eichard  as  a  man  of  restless  Intel-    ; 
lect    and    great    personal    fascination.     ; 
Also,  departing  wholly  from  the  ruf&an    \ 
theory  held  by  more  than  one  famous    i 
,         actor.  Booth  seldom  allowed  Eichard  to    i 


34  EDWm"  BOOTH 

forget  his  kingship,  but  gave  him  dig- 
nity at  his  most  atrocious  moments.  *^  I 
was  born  so  high/'  cries  Gloster  to  Dorsety 

*^Our  aiery  buildeth  in  the  cedar's  top, 
And  dallies  with  the  wind  and  scorns 
the  sun.'' 

These  lines,  the  most  exalted  and  the 
most  imaginative  in  a  play  that,  by 
Shakespeare^s  gauge,  lacks  imagination, 
mark  the  Plantagenet's  consciousness  of 
his  rank.  Taken  with  other  utterances 
of  BicharWs  towering  pride,  the  speech 
might  have  been  Booth's  warrant  for 
cloaking  the  king's  crimes  with  majesty. 


IV. 

Soon  after  Edwin  Booth's  first  play- 
ing of  Bichard  he  made  an  engagement 
with  Theodore  Barton,  of  Baltimore,  to 
act  any  part  given  him,  at  a  salary  of 
six  dollars  a  week.  Valuable  as  the 
training  probably  was,  Booth  seldom 
succeeded  in  little  parts  or  in  plays 
other  than  tragedy.  One  of  his  direst 
failures  was  an  attempt  in  pantomime 
with  Madame  Ciocca,  who  abused  him 
in  broken  English  for  his  awkward 
struggle  to  be  graceful  in  a  light  and 
airy  fashion.  Excellent  discipline,  too, 
was  this  failure  for  a  youth  who  had 
determined  to  become  a  well-graced 
actor  and  to  make  every  fibre  in  his 
body  expressive. 

In  the  year  1852  the  elder  Booth, 
Junius  and  Edwin  with  him,  sailed  from 
Kew  York  for  California.  A  week 
brought  them  to  Aspinwall,  whence  they 
went  up  the  Ohagres  Eiver  to  Gorgona, 


36  EDWIK  BOOTH 

on  a  flat-boat  that  carried  both  pas- 
sengers and  luggage.  They  passed  one 
well-remembered  night  at  Gorgona, 
sleeping  or  trying  to  sleep  in  a  hut,  on 
trunks  and  wine-casks.  The  onlv  woman 
in  the  party  occupied  a  hammock.  Each 
man  held  a  pistol  under  his  pillow. 
Edwin,  unable  to  sleep,  could  see  the 
natives  sharpening  their  maeheetos  — 
'^or  long  knives  which  they  used  to 
cut  the  tall  grass  in  front  of  them  as 
they  journeyed  on  foot'' — but  could 
not  understand  their  whispered  talk. 
Eats  ran  about  the  hut  during  the  night. 
In  the  morning  the  unrefreshed  travel- 
lers rose  and  proceeded  on  mules  across 
the  isthmus. 

After  an  engagement  of  two  weeks  at 
San  Francisco,  whose  tentative  civilisa- 
tion may  have  seemed  eftete  by  contrast 
with  the  Booths'  checkered  progress  to 
it,  they  went  on  to  Sacramento.  There, 
for  his  benefit,  the  elder  Booth  put  up 
"Eichard  III."      Next    night  Junius, 


EDWIN   BOOTH  37 

at  his  benefit^  played  Othello  to  Ms 
father's  lago.  On  the  third  night  of 
benefits,  Edwin  took  his  as  Jaffier  to  his 
father's  Pierre,  in  ^^  Venice  Preserved.'' 
This  very  rhetorical  but  very  interesting 
tragedy,  although  now  unknown  to  the 
young  play-goer,  was  an  important  por- 
tion of  his  grandfather's  dramatic  meat 
and  drink.  When  the  elder  Booth 
caught  sight  of  Edwin  in  his  Jaffier 
costume  —  it  was  of  course,  black  —  he 
said:  ^^ You  look  like  Samlet;  why  did 
you  not  act  Samlet  for  your  benefit  *?" 
Edwin  replied, — ^^  If  I  ever  have  another, 
I  mlV^  At  his  next  benefit,  which  did 
not  occur  until  after  the  death  of  his 
father,  he  remembered  the  lightly  spoken 
word,  and  played  Samlet, 

Disappointed  at  the  lack  of  a  suitable 
theatre  in  San  Francisco,  and  influenced 
also  by  the  sudden  coming  of  ^^hard 
times,"  the  elder  Booth,  in  October, 
1852,  started  for  New  York.  As  Edwin 
was  now  in  earnest  to  be  an  actor,  his 


38  EDWm  BOOTH 

father  would  not  take  him  along,  but 
advised  him  to  go  on  with  his  profession 
in  California.  He  took  the  advice  and, 
when  the  hard  times  soon  became 
harder,  he  agreed  with  Mr.  D.  W. 
Waller  to  go  with  him  to  a  town  or 
settlement  called  INTevada.  There  Booth 
first  acted  lago.  At  parting,  his  brother 
Junius  (J.  B.  Booth,  Jr.)  had  said  to 
him  :  —  ^^  Put  a  slug  [^  a  large  octagonal 
gold  piece  of  fifty  dollars '  ]  in  the  bottom 
of  your  trunk,  forget  you  have  it,  and 
when  things  are  at  the  worst,  bring  out 
the  slug.''  It  was  soon  time  to  dig 
up  the  buried  treasure.  With  ruin 
staring  them  in  the  face,  the  people  of 
ISTevada  had  not  a  penny  for  the  fine 
arts,  and  the  theatrical  thermometer 
registered  zero.  The  physical  tempera- 
ture was  scarcely  higher.  Snow  fell 
incessantly  until  the  poor  strollers  were 
cut  off  from  the  world.  One  night, 
when  the  theatre  had  been  ^^dark''  a 
fortnight.    Booth  was  walking  along  a 


EDWIN  BOOTH  39 

road  where  the  gold-diggers  had  under- 
mined the  houses  and  left  dangerous 
gulches.  Suddenly,  in  the  mud  and 
snow  and  darkness,  he  came  face  to  face 
with  a  man  carrying  a  lantern.  By  its 
flickering  dimness  he  made  out  the 
features  of  George  Spear,  an  actor  fa- 
miliarly called  ^^Old  Spudge,''  who 
exclaimed,  ^^ Hello!  Ted,  is  that  you? 
There's  a  mail  in,  and  a  letter  for  you, ' ' 
The  retarded  courier  had  at  last  broken 
through  the  drifts  and  arrived  on  horse- 
back with  the  mail-bag. 

^*  What  news  is  there  1 "  asked  Booth. 
^^Not  good  news  for  you,  my  boy.'' 
In  the  tone  of  the  reply  or  the  look  of  the 
speaker,  the  boy  seemed  to  read  an  omen, 
for  he  cried  out,  ^^  Spear,  is  my  father 
dead?"  The  old  actor  led  him  back, 
half- crazed,  to  the  hotel,  where  the  kind 
friends  who  tried  to  calm  him  were  none 
the  less  kind  because  they  could  not 
fathom  his  deep  grief  or  understand  his 
self-reproach  for  having  allowed  his 
father  to  go  home  alone. 


40  EDWm  BOOTH 

Still  the  cold  held,  still  the  snow  fell, 
and  men  considered  what  to  do.  Win- 
ter and  misfortune  had  made  equals  in 
]:^evada  of  ^^  ruffian,  gambler,  labourer, 
and  scholar.''  One  day,  as  a  group  of 
the  motley  democracy  stood  at  a  street 
corner  bewailing  their  outcast  state,  some 
one  proposed  that  they  should  walk  to 
Marysville.  Among  those  who  took  up 
the  gage  were  an  actor  named  Barry  and 
a  musician  whose  violin,  a  la  Paganini's 
single  string,  had  been  the  theatre's 
whole  orchestra.  Booth  added  himself 
to  the  handful  of  adventurers  5  and 
together,  the  foremost  being  road- 
breaker,  they  tramped  fifty  miles  across 
the  snowy  mountains.  At  the  end  of 
the  second  day  they  came  to  Marysville, 
where  they  disbanded.  Booth  went 
thence  to  Sacramento. 

After  more  days  of  leanness  and  a 
hard  though  profitable  apprenticeship  at 
^^ utility"  parts  under  the  management 
of  J.  B.    Booth  and  the  Messrs.  Chap- 


EDWIIST  BOOTH  41 

man,  in  San  Francisco,  Edwin  Booth  had. 
a  great  success  as  Bichard  III,  played  for 
the  benefit  of  Fairchild,  a  scene-painter. 
Sir  Giles  Overreach  and  Macbeth  were 
good  seconds  in  public  favour.  Sam- 
let, although  the  managers  urged  it  upon 
Booth,  he  consistently  refused  to  play 
until  a  benefit  was  offered  him.  The 
careless  pledge  made  to  his  father,  had 
become  ^^an  oath  in  Heaven.'*  J.  B. 
Booth,  in  spite  of  his  brother's  triumphs, 
thought  him  still  of  a  pupil  age,  and 
reduced  him  three  times  from  star  parts 
to  utility.  This  apparent  snubbing,  as 
he  once  said  to  Mr.  William  Winter,  was 
^^a  lesson  for  crushed  tragedians.'' 
And  Booth's  unquestioning  docility,  no 
less  than  the  power  to  act  effectively  to 
his  father's  audiences  parts  in  which  his 
father  had  long  been  famous,  adapted  to 
him  Heine's  saying  about  another  youth 
of  rich  promise,  that  he  had  a  magnificent 
past  before  him. 

Booth  went  on  briskly  accumulating 


42  EDWIJST  BOOTH 

his  past  by  taking  a  trip  to  Australia  in 
the  year  1854,  with  Miss  Laura  Keene, 
a  well-known  actress  of  the  time,  and 
D.  C.  Anderson,  a  much  older  actor 
whose  intimate  friendship  he  had  formed. 
On  going  aboard  their  brig,  Booth 
discovered  that  two  ladies  had  invited 
themselves  to  share  his  voyage  and  act 
with  him  in  Australia.  One  was  the 
captain's  wife,  who  had  been  an  actress 
and  was  then  insane  5  the  other,  an  ac- 
tress of  ^^ heavy  business''  who  was  not 
without  vogue  in  San  Francisco.  Ko  one 
of  the  three  player- queens  had  known  the 
intentions  of  either  of  the  others.  When 
they  met  on  the  brig,  with  their  respec- 
tive wardrobes,  the  scene  must  have 
been  comedy,  broadening  into  farce  or 
darkening  into  melodrama :  the  record 
doesn't  tell  us  which. 

The  voyage  from  San  Francisco  to 
Sydney  lasted  seventy-two  days,  during 
twelve  of  which  the  vessel  was  becalmed. 
In  Sydney  Booth  played  a  satisfactory 


EDWIN  BOOTH  43 

engagement,  opening  with  ShylocJc,  which 
he  had  never  acted  before.  At  Mel- 
bourne, which  was  less  auspicious  than 
Sydney,  Booth  and  Miss  Keene  parted. 
He  then  took  passage  with  Anderson 
and  a  few  other  players  for  the  Sand- 
wich Islands.  At  Honolulu,  Booth  — 
who  had  just  fifty  dollars  in  his  pocket  — 
hired  the  only  theatre  and  brought  out 
^^Eichard  III,'^  ^^  The  Lady  of  Lyons/' 
and  other  plays.  As  the  court  was  in 
mourning  for  the  King  of  the  Sandwich 
Islands,  his  successor  could  not  go  pub- 
licly to  the  play  ;  but,  on  his  signifying 
a  wish  to  see  Booth's  Eichard,  His 
Majesty  was  seated  on  the  stage- throne, 
placed  in  the  wings  with  a  theatrical 
robe  thrown  over  it.  ^^His  escort''  — 
says  Mrs.  Clarke  —  ^^  who  were  a  French- 
man and  a  huge  Kanaka,  the  latter  wear- 
ing a  military  jacket,  white  trousers,  and 
a  long  sword,  stood  by  his  side."  In  the 
coronation  scene  Booth  had  t6  trouble 
His  Majesty  for  the  throne,  which,  as  a 


44  EDWIlSr  BOOTH 

matter  of  fact,  was  but  an  arm-chair ; 
and  Kamehamelia  lY  obligingly  stood 
until  Eichard  III  was  duly  crowned. 

Entertaining  as  was  a  good  deal  of  tlie 
Sandwich.  Island  venture,  its  gains  were 
not  enough  to  keep  Booth  from  going 
back  soon  to  California.  At  Sacra- 
mentO;  during  the  dramatic  season  of 
1855,  he  ^^ created"  the  part  of  Eaphael 
in  the  first  American  production  of 
^^ The  Marble  Heart.''  More  hardships 
followed,  ending  in  a  second  penniless 
return  to  Sacramento,  which  had  played 
a  curiously  varied  part  in  Booth's  West- 
ern travels.  Good  friends,  however,  ar- 
ranged two  benefits,  and  in  San  Fran- 
cisco he  was  given  a  third,  at  which  he 
acted  King  Lear  for  the  first  time  —  in 
the  Tate  version,  afterward  discarded. 
September,  1856,  ended  the  California 
period,  which,  with  the  Australian  and 
Sandwich-Island  nine  months,  had  lasted 
a  little  over  four  years.  ^^The  world's 
rough  hand"  had,  with  roughest  meth- 


EDWIN  BOOTH  45 

ods,  in  these  four  years  at  the  world's 
university^  fashioned  a  boy  into  a  man 
and  an  artist.  He  had  studied  men  and 
cities,  as  well  as  Shakespeare  and  the 
stage.  Though  he  did  not  know  it  then, 
the  day  of  small  things,  small  cares,  and 
meagre  living,  had  passed :  the  many 
bright  days  of  an  illustrious  career  were 
opening  before  him.  True  (though  this, 
also,  he  happily  could  not  know),  their 
brightness  was  to  be  shadowed  —  once 
almost  eclipsed  forever  —  by  griefs  of  a 
kind  to  make  poverty,  anxiety  for  the 
morrow,  cold,  almost  hunger  itself,  seem 
light  and  trivial  annoyances.  But  fame 
was  to  be  his  inalienable  possession  ;  and 
fortune,  won  at  first  only  to  be  lost,  was 
to  be  won  again  in  even  larger  measure, 
and  used  to  his  lasting  honour.  Better 
than  the  fame  and  fortune  so  soon  to  be 
his,  more  important,  perhaps,  than  any 
other  element  in  Booth's  nature  or  train- 
ing, was  the  fact  that  both  the  man  and 
the  actor  were  of  a  sort  to  crystallise 


46  EDWIN  BOOTH 

late.  He  had  still,  and  knew  that  he 
had,  a  thousand  things  to  learn,  and  he 
never  wearied  of  the  lesson.  So  that  the 
Booth  whom  the  world  saw  and  his 
Mends  knew,  in  the  eighties,  was  a 
much  nobler  creature  than  the  brilliant, 
winning  young  man  who,  in  the  fifties, 
fulfilled  the  prophecy  of  his  Californian 
friends  and  took  the  American  stage  by 
storm. 


V. 

Booth's  first  Eastern  successes  were 
in  Baltimore^  Washington,  Eiclimond, 
Charleston,  Kew  Orleans,  and  other 
Southern  towns.  To  Boston,  however, 
he  looked  for  a  decision  whether  he 
should  keep  on  as  a  ^^star,"  or  ^^  retire 
to  the  stock.''  ^^The  playgoers  of  that 
city,"  Mr.  Winter  tells  us,  ^^were  re- 
markable for  refinement  of  taste  and 
severity  of  judgment,  and  Booth  assured 
me  that  he  looked  forward  to  his  appear- 
ance there  with  trepidation."  Such  was 
his  trepidation,  such  his  modesty,  that 
he  wrote  afterward  in  a  manuscript 
note:  ^^The  height  of  my  expectation 
was  to  become  a  leading  actor  in  a  'New 
York  theatre,  after  my  starring  tour  — 
which  I  supposed  would  last  a  season  or 
two." 

On  the  evening  of  April  20,  1857, 
Booth  appeared  at  the  Boston  Theatre, 
one  of  the  very  largest  of  playhouses, 


48  EDWm  BOOTH 

in  the  character  of  Sir  Giles  Overreach. 
Not  yet  twenty-four  years  old,  lie  was 
called  to  make  his  difficult  essay  before 
a  small  audience  in  a  large  theatre. 
Worse  than  this,  many  of  the  few  present 
were  white-haired,  critical  persons  who 
had  seen  the  elder  Booth  act  Sir  Giles  in 
the  fulness  of  his  power.  The  spring 
night  was  chill,  as  spring  nights  often 
are  in  Boston.  ^^When  Sir  Giles  ap- 
peared'' —  so  runs  Mrs.  Clarke's  account 
—  ^^oud  and  prolonged  applause  greeted 
him ;  then  (as  he  described  it)  the  people 
braced  themselves,  self-satisfied,  in  their 
seats,  as  if  to  say,  Now,  young  man,  let 
us  see  what  you  can  do  for  yourself. 
The  play  proceeded  quietly  until  the 
fourth  act,  when  the  player  was  on  his 
mettle.  This  Boston  indorsement  was 
to  decide  his  future  ;  and  with  a  nervous 
calm  he  reserved  himself  for  the  last 
great  scenes.  The  effect  was  electrifying, 
the  call  genuine  and  spontaneous  5  he 
knew  his  power,  and  felt  that  he  was 


EDWIK  BOOTH  49 

safe.  The  next  day  his  pronounced 
success  was  universally  acknowledged, 
and  the  press  was  unanimous  in  his 
praise. '^  Mr.  Winter,  who  was  among 
the  young  persons  in  the  house,  records 
that  Booth  ' '  was  completely  victorious. ' ' 
In  this,  as  in  all  his  victories,  he  re- 
mained modest,  but  he  no  longer  mis- 
trusted himself  or  doubted  his  own 
IDOwers. 

From  Boston  Booth  went  to  Xew 
York,  where,  at  Burton^  s  Metropolitan 
Theatre,  on  May  4,  he  began  (against 
his  will)  with  Bichard  III.  In  this 
performance,  says  Ireland,  author  of 
Records  of  the  New  York  Stage,  Booth 
^^gave  evidence  of  the  highest  order  of 
talenf  Sir  Giles,  ShylocJc,  Lear,  and 
Borneo,  followed  5  Hamlet,  Claude  Mel- 
notte,  Sir  Edward  Mortimer,  Petrucliio, 
St.  Pierre,  The  Stranger,  Lucius  Brutus, 
and  Pescara.  Bichelieu,  first  played  by 
Booth  at  Sacramento,  in  July,  1856,  was 
also  among  the  characters  in  another 


50  EDWIN  BOOTH 

^ '  completely  victorious ' '  engagement. 
In  measuring  the  value  of  Booth's  New 
York  success,  it  is  well  to  remember  Mr. 
Jefferson's  statement  about  one  aspect  of 
the  New  York  theatres  in  that  very  year. 
After  speaking  of  his  own  engagement, 
in  September,  1857,  for  ^Hhe  leading 
comedy '^  at  Laura  Keene's  theatre,  he 
says:  ^^It  was  my  first  appearance  on 
the  western  side  of  the  city.  ...  It 
was  looked  upon  as  a  kind  of  presump- 
tion in  those  days  for  an  American  actor 
to  intrude  himself  into  a  Broadway 
theatre  5  the  domestic  article  seldom 
aspired  to  anything  higher  than  the 
Bowery ;  consequently  I  was  regarded 
as  something  of  an  interloper.'' 

August  31  saw  Booth  beginning 
another  series  of  performances  at  the 
Metropolitan,  which  he  followed  with  a 
second  trip  through  the  South  and  one 
to  the  West.  In  1858,  at  the  Eichmond 
theatre,  he  met  Miss  Mary  Devlin,  after- 
ward his  wife.     This  gentle,    beautifal 


EDWIN  BOOTH  51 

girl  was  a  good  musician  and  at  least 
a  pleasing  actress,  but  left  tlie  stage  upon 
her  betrothal  to  Booth  in  1859.  On 
July  7,  I860,  they  were  married  by  the 
Eev.  Dr.  Osgood  at  his  house,  'No,  154 
(now  113)  West  11th  Street,  New  York. 
In  the  winter  of  1879-80  Booth  went  to 
the  house  and  asked  to  see  again  the 
clergyman's  study,  in  which,  he  said, 
he  had  ^^  secured  his  greatest  happi- 
ness.'^  The  all  too  short  life  of  the  two 
together  was  indeed  a  happy  one.  Yery 
soon  after  their  marriage,  Mrs.  Booth 
accompanied  her  husband  to  England, 
where  they  lived  till  September,  1862. 
Their  only  child,  Edwina,  now  Mrs.  Ig- 
natius Grossmann,  was  born  at  Fulham, 
London,  December  9,  1861.  When  the 
Booths  came  back  to  America,  they 
made  their  home  at  Dorchester,  Massa- 
chusetts. Although  the  health  of  Mrs. 
Booth  had  already  broken,  she  was  not 
thought  seriously  ill  when  Booth  left  her 
to  go  upon  a  distant  tour.     But  they 


52  EDWIN  BOOTH 

never  met  again,  for  Mrs.  Booth  grew 
suddenly  worse,  and  died  on  February 
21,  1863.  At  Mount  Auburn,  almost  a 
third  of  a  century  later,  her  husband  was 
laid  beside  her.  The  beauty  of  Mrs. 
Booth's  face  was  commemorated  in  one 
art  by  Eastman  Johnson  and  W.  J. 
Hennessey ;  in  another,  her  virtues  and 
the  loveliness  of  her  nature  were  finely 
suggested  by  Parsons,  a  true  poet  who 
is  little  read.  Booth  wrote  of  his  loss  to 
Adam  Badeau  :  — ^^  My  heart  is  crushed, 
dryed  up,  and  desolate.  .  .  .  My  child 
can  never  fill  her  place,  for  she  was  my 
child,  my  baby- wife.  Every  little  toy 
of  hers,  every  little  scrap  of  paper  the 
most  worthless,  are  full  of  her  because 
she  has  touched  them.  They  recall  her 
more  vividly  than  the  baby  does.  .  .  . 
She  climbs  my  knee,  and  prattles  all 
day  long  to  me  ;  but  still  she  is  not  the 
baby  I  have  loved  and  cherished  so  de- 
votedly.'' Later  in  the  same  letter  the 
mourner  cries  out  that  he  needs  ^^some 


EDWIN  BOOTH  53 

sign  from  her,  some  little  breath  of  wind, 
nothing  more,  whispering  comfortable 
words  of  her.'' 

That  Booth  was  capable  of  ardent 
friendship  as  of  ardent  love,  he  gave 
more  than  one  gracious  token.  For 
Captain  Eichard  Gary,  one  of  his  dear- 
est friends,  who  was  killed  in  the  Civil 
War,  he  expressed  his  affection  in  a 
remarkable  letter  to  Cary's  sister,  Mrs. 
Felton,  of  Cambridge.  ^^But,  above 
alP' — this  is  a  part  of  what  Booth 
wrote,  under  date  of  September  11, 
1862 —  ''the  sad,  sweet  relic  he  has  left 
me  —  the  letter  signed  with  his  death  — 
will  forever  be  to  me  a  source  of  conso- 
lation. It  will  keep  forever  fresh  the 
truth  of  him  who  thought  of  his  friend 
even  on  the  field  of  battle. 

^^  Eichard  was  always  in  my  eyes  the 
noblest  of  men,  and  his  conduct  in  the 
face  of  death  proves  that  I  was  right  in 
my  judgment  of  him.  He  was  a  hero 
born ;  he  acted  as  Eichard  Cary  only 


54  EDWm  BOOTH  ] 

could  act,  —  nobly,  unselfishly,  bravely.  ' 
I  knew  it  would  be  so  ;  I  knew  that  he 
would  be  loved  by  all  about  him  5  and  I 
knew  that  if  he  fell,  he  would  be  found  ' 
contented,  grand  in  death.  I  can  appre-  j 
ciate  the  feelings  of  him  who  felt  like  ■ 
kissing  him.  ...  1 

^^With  dearest  love  for  you  all,  in  ! 
which  my  wife  joins  me,  believe  me  j 
ever  your  friend  and  servant,  and  your  ! 
brother's  lover,  Edwin  Booth.''       I 

\ 

During  the  stay  in  England  already  : 
spoken  of.  Booth  played  at  the  Hay-  j 
market  his  first  London  engagement.  \ 
He  began  in  September,  1861,  with  \ 
Shylock;  continued  a  not  too  successful  : 
venture  with  Sir  Giles  Overreach^  and  \ 
ended  with  Eichelieu,  a  character  in  ] 
which  he  at  last  excited  enthusiasm.  : 
From  London  he  went  to  Liverpool  and  | 
Manchester.  At  Manchester,  Henry  j 
Irving  —  then  a  member  of  the  stock  j 
company  that  supported  Booth  —  played  I 


EDWIN  BOOTH  55 

Laertes  to  liis  Hamlet^  Cassio  to  his  Othello, 
Bassanio  to  his  ShylocJc,  Wellborn  to  his 
Sir  Giles,  and  BucJcingham  to  his  Gloster. 
A  strong  element  of  Booth's  ill  success 
at  that  time  was  no  doubt  the  deplorable 
attitude  of  the  English  toward  ^^  Yan- 
kees'' and  their  cause. 

Before  Booth's  return  to  New  York, 
the  Metropolitan  Theatre,  in  Broadway- 
opposite  to  the  end  of  Bond  Street,  had 
become  the  Winter  Garden.  Beginning 
on  September  29,  1862,  Booth  acted  at 
the  renamed  theatre,  with  brief  inter- 
vals, until  March  23,  1867.  This  long 
period  was  principally  given  to  a  series 
of  splendid  and  splendidly  successful 
performances  of  the  standard  drama. 
During  the  first  engagement  Booth  acted 
Samlet,  Othello,  Lucius  Brutus,  ShylocJc, 
Bichard  LIL,  Borneo,  Bescara,  Sir  Edward 
Mortimer,  and  Don  Ccesar  de  Bazan, 
Not  a  poor  part  (though  some  poor 
plays)  in  the  list ;  and  each  piece  was 
liberally  put  on  the  stage  in  accord  with 


56  EDWIN  BOOTH 

the  best  taste  of  the  time.  The  eager 
and  continued  zest  of  the  public  for  these 
representations,  the  approval  of  elect 
persons  in  the  community,  and  much 
thoughtful  discussion  in  newspapers  and 
periodicals,  marked  what  would  have 
been  an  achievement  for  any  actor. 
For  an  actor  not  yet  thirty,  the  achieve- 
ment was  extraordinary. 

^  ^  Long  afterward, ' '  writes  Mr.  Winter, 
^^  referring  to  the  Winter  Garden  en- 
gagement which  his  wife's  death  had 
terminated,  he  said,  ^  I  had  not  yet  got 
the  control  of  my  devil.'  His  infirmity, 
which  he  had  inherited  from  his  erratic 
father  —  and  which,  in  report,  was 
greatly  exaggerated  —  was  an  intermit- 
tent craze  for  drink."  This  craze, 
although  he  resisted  it,  from  time  to 
time  possessed  him.  From  the  day  of 
his  wife's  death,  however,  to  the  last  day 
of  his  own  life,  he  was,  in  this  regard, 
master  of  himself.  Mr.  Winter,  a  pre- 
cise and  competent  witness  in  the  matter, 


EDWIN  BOOTH  67 

declares  that  not  only  did  Booth  never 
drink  again  to  excess,  but  that,  in  the 
last  thirty  years  of  his  life,  he  would 
very  rarely  allow  himself  alcohol  even 
as  a  medicine.  In  tobacco  he  did  ex- 
ceed, and  tobacco  slowly  killed  him. 
^^  He  could  not  live  without  it,  and  yet 
it  steadily  injured  him."  Toward  the 
end  of  his  career  —  that  is,  in  the  last 
four  or  five  years  of  acting  —  his  brain 
seemed  to  be  growing  numb.  He  rallied 
superbly  again  and  again,  but  more  and 
more  often  he  sank  into  apathy ;  his 
speech  suffered ;  and  vertigo  attacked 
him.  This  sometimes  happened  when 
he  was  acting,  and  then  certain  news- 
papers accused  him  of  drunkenness.  It 
is  pleasant  to  know  that,  all  and  singu- 
lar, these  charges  were  false.  Booth  had 
got  ^^his  deviP^  under  foot,  and  never 
let  him  up  again  into  fighting  position. 
It  is  good  to  know  also  that  through 
grief  he  steadily  grew  stronger.  His 
near  friends  observed  too  that  he  became 


58  EDWm  BOOTH 

yet  more  humble,  fuller  of  faith,  more 
gentle,  than  he  had  ever  been.  His 
charities,  always  very  generous,  took  a 
still  wider  scope.  And  to  these  virtues 
Booth,  like  the  great  sorrowful  queen  in 
the  play,  added  one  more  ^^  honour — a 
great  patience.'' 

For  the  next  few  years  he  needed,  and 
showed  that  he  possessed,  the  power  to 
bear  prosperity  well.  In  1863  Booth 
and  his  brother-in-law,  J.  S.  Clarke, 
bought  the  Walnut  Street  Theatre,  Phil- 
adelphia, which  they  directed  together 
from  the  summer  of  1863  till  March, 
1870,  when  Clarke  bought  out  his  part- 
ner. The  two  also  undertook  the  man- 
agement of  the  Winter  Garden,  associat- 
ing with  themselves  —  first  as  agent, 
then  as  lessee  —  an  injurious  person 
named  Edmund  OTlaherty,  but  called 
William  Stuart.  Booth's  first  appear- 
ance on  the  stage  after  the  death  of  Mrs. 
Booth  was  as  Hamlet^  on  September  21, 
1863.      With  that    performance  began 


EDWIK  BOOTH  59 

the  new  management  of  tlie  Winter 
Garden.  Toward  the  end  of  the  en- 
gagement,  which  lasted  till  October  17, 
Booth  played  Buy  Bias  for  the  first  time. 
The  twenty-eighth  of  March,  1864,  was 
dies  mirabilis,  for  on  the  evening  of  that 
day,  at  Mblo's  Garden,  Booth  gave  his 
first  'New  York  performance  of  Bertuccio, 
in  ^^The  FooFs  Eevenge.''  His  acting 
in  this  character,  then  and  afterward, 
transcended  the  effect  of  the  theatre  and 
—  like  Salvini's  Conrad,  Jananschek's 
Lady  JDedlocJc  and  Sortense,  Jefferson^  s 
Eip  van  WinMe,  Dnse's  Santuzza,  and  a 
very  few  other  impersonations  that 
might  be  named  —  seemed  almost  to 
take  its  place  in  the  personal  experi- 
ence of  those  who  saw  it. 

Meanwhile  the  next  important  point 
in  Booth's  progress  was  his  acting  of 
Macbeth,  also  at  Mblo's,  with  Charlotte 
Oushman  as  Lady  Macbeth,  Miss  Cush- 
man  dissented  from  the  subtlety  of 
Booth's  idea  of  the  Thane   of  Cawdor, 


60  EDWm  BOOTH 

and  —  so  it  is  said  —  begged  him  to  re- 
member that  '^  Macbeth  is  the  ancestor 
of  all  the  Bowery  ruffians.''  An  anti- 
quated view. 

A  special  performance  of  ^^  Julius 
Caesar''  was  given  at  the  Winter  Gar- 
den on  ISTovember  25,  1864,  in  aid  of  the 
fund  to  erect  a  statue  of  Shakespeare  in 
Central  Park.  Edwin  Booth  acted  Bru- 
tuSj  Junius  acted  CassiuSy  and  John 
Wilkes,  Mark  Antony. 


VI. 

After  a  summer  of  preparation, 
^^ Hamlet''  was  put  on  the  stage  on  the 
evening  of  November  26.  Exceeding  all 
American  precedent  for  a  play  of  Shake- 
speare, it  ran  one  hundred  nights.  ^^It 
was  more  splendidly  produced" — Mrs. 
Clarke  thought — ^^than  any  other  that 
had  ever  been  presented,  with  the  excep- 
tion, perhaps,  of^  King  John'  and  ^Eich- 
ard  III,'  many  years  previously,  at  the 
old  Park  Theatre,  under  the  direction 
of  Mr.  Charles  Kean." 

^^ Hamlet"  could  not  run  now  for  half 
a  hundred  nights  —  partly,  no  doubt,  be- 
cause within  the  last  twenty  years  there 
have  been  so  many  exponents  of  the 
Prince  of  Denmark.  Although  the  other 
tragedies  of  Shakespeare  have  vanished, 
one  by  one,  from  the  American  stage, 
until  ^^ Macbeth"  is  the  only  one  famil- 
iar to  it,  ^^Eomeo  and  Juliet" — the 
tragedy  of  young  love  —  and  ' '  Hamlet, ' ' 


62  EDWIN  BOOTH 

Shakespeare's  anticipation  of  the  sad- 
ness and  doubt  of  nineteenth- century 
thought,  experience  ever  new  incarna- 
tions. JN'ow,  as  always,  every  girl  must 
play  Juliet  I^ow,  more  than  ever, 
every  young  man  must  play  Samlet 

The  young  actor  is  not  checked  but 
rather  urged  by  the  fact  that,  within 
the  last  twenty  years,  at  least  a  dozen 
more  or  less  noteworthy  Hamlets  have 
been  seen  upon  our  stage.  Not  one  of 
them  was  without  interesting  attributes. 
Not  one  was  quite  a  failure  —  not  even 
the  epicene  French  Samlet  that  splashed 
brilliantly  about  in  the  shallows  of  the 
character. 

But  if  they  have'  thus  borne  out  the 
truth  of  the  old  saying  that  no  player 
ever  failed  in  Samlet,  they  have  also 
testified  to  the  truth  of  what  should  be 
equally  a  proverb  —  that  no  actor  makes 
his  greatest  success  in  that  part.  Sir 
\^  Henry  Irving  might  have  done  it  (for 
he  has  more  ideas  to  the  scene  in  ^^  Ham- 


EDWIK  BOOTH  63 

lef  than  any  other  three  actors),  ex- 
cept that  he  is  clogged  by  a  grotesquely 
unequal  execution  and  by  the  inabilityj 
to  speak  verse. 

Of  Booth's  Samlet,  as  of  his  other  per- 
formances, it  is  strangely  hard  to  write 
intelligently,  or  even  intelligibly,  for 
persons  who  never  saw  him,  because 
there  is  no  actor  on  the  American  or  the 
English  stage  with  whom  he  can  reason- 
ably be  compared.  Here  is  not  to  fol- 
low a  mourning  paragraph  on  the  de- 
cadence of  the  stage.  I  should  be  sorry 
to  make  another  Jeremiah,  however  un- 
important, in  the  long  line  of  those  who, 
if  their  lamentations  were  to  be  believed, 
would  convince  us  that  the  theatre  has 
been  degenerating  ever  since  ^^  Eliza  and 
our  James,''  and  would  make  us  wonder 
why  it  is  not  extinct.  On  the  contrary, 
I  see  many  hopeful  signs  in  play- writers 
and  play-actors.  I  do  not  despair  even 
of  play-goers.  In  saying  that  there  is 
no  one  on  our  stage  at  all  like  Booth,  I 


64  EDWII^  BOOTH 

mean  merely  that,  with  the  passing  of 
serious  drama  in  verse,  the  sort  of  actor 
who    could   embody  it  has  also  gone. 

'Booth  represented  the  end  of  a  tradition 
in  acting  as  clearly  as  Burns  represented 
the  end  of  a  tradition  in  song  and  ballad 
writing.  The  school  to  which  he  be- 
longed began  with  Burbage,  included 
Mrs.  Siddons  and  the  other  Kembles, 
ended  in  England  with  Macready,  and 

I  in  America  with  Booth. 

The  word  rhetorical,  so  often  applied 
•  this  famous  school,  is  not  a  misnomer 
if  only  it  be  remembered  that  their 
native  and  acquired  mastery  of  diction 
—  in  the  French  sense  —  was  but  one 
means  of  expressing  the  ideal  quality  of 
the  highest  characters  they  imperson- 
ated. Whatever  their  excesses  and  ex- 
aggerations—  and  these  have  been  the 
objects  of  much  refreshing  satire  long 
before  and  long  since  ^^The  Critic''  — 
the  players  of  the  old,  or  rhetorical,  or 
idealising  school,  were  aware  that  poetic 


r  ■ 

I  to- 


EDWIN  BOOTH  65 

tragedy  is  one  thing  and  comedy  of  man- 
ners another,  that  verse  is  one  thing  and 
prose  another.  Booth,  no  more  than 
his  predecessors,  wonld  have  subscribed 
to  the  notion  that  a  character  of  Shake- 
speare may  fitly  be  rendered  like  a  char- 
acter of  Pinero  or  the  younger  Dumas. 
He  was  sure,  if  I  may  trust  my  recollec- 
tion of  his  performances,  that  no  creat- 
ure of  the  poet's  imagination  is  more 
remote  from  Vhomme  moyen  sensuel  (whom 
we  now  know  and  value  as  the  man  in 
the  street),  than  Samlet^  Prince  of  Den- 1 
marJc. 

But,  before  considering  Booth's  man- 
ner of  portraying  the  prince,  let  me  say 
another  word,  however  ineffectual,  about 
the  kinship  with  Shakespeare  that  re- 
vealed itself  so  nobly  in  his  utterance  of 
Shakespeare's  verse.  The  Greeks  were 
unanimous  in  their  opinion  that  a  voice 
is  the  actor's  chief  gift.  Plato  knew 
what  he  was  about  when  he  excluded 
from  his  ideal  republic  ^^  the  actors,  with 


66  edwi:n^  booth 

their  sweet  voices."  For  were  they  not 
mouthL-pieces  of  those  other  inadmissible 
persons,  the  poets?  So  that  one  of 
Booth's  passports  to  Shakespeare  land 
would  have  been  the  very  means  of 
stopping  him  at  Plato's  frontier.  As  it 
was  with  the  Greeks,  so  it  was  with  the 
English  actors  from  whom  Booth  de- 
rived —  actors  of  the  old,  or  rhetorical, 
or  idealising  school.  When  they  did 
not  inherit  good  voices,  they  strove  to 
"build''  them.  They  studied  hard, 
moreover,  not  only  to  supply  defects, 
but  to  cover  irremediable  faults.  Bet- 
terton's  '^  voice  was  low  and  grumbling  ; 
yet  he  could  tune  it  by  an  artfal  climax, 
which  enforced  universal  attention,  even 
from  fops  and  orange-girls."  And  with 
their  voices,  good,  bad,  or  indifferent, 
but  always  trained,  they  learned  to 
speak  both  verse  and  prose. 
r  Booth,  as  we  know,  had  by  nature  a 
beautiful  and  eloquent  voice.  Listening 
at  the  keyhole  to  his  father,  years  of 


EDWII!^  BOOTH  67 

association  with  his  father,  and  constant 
self-training,  with  the  aid  of  his  own  in- 
tellect, taste,  and  aptitude,  brought 
Booth's  delivery — especially  of  blank 
verse  —  to  such  excellence  that,  during 
the  last  twenty-five  years  of  his  career, 
when  he  was  without  an  English-speak- 
ing rival  in  heroic  parts  in  tragedy,  his  \ 
speech  was  a  recognised  model.  It  was 
as  far  as  possible  from  an  artificial  or 
external  elocution,  which  is  a  vain  thing. 
It  was  equally  far  from  the  laborious 
diction  of  pedants.  Booth  did  not 
mouth,  or  recite,  or  —  except  in  bad 
moments — declaim,  as  it  is  to  be  feared 
the  old  actors  often  did.  Nor  did  he 
croon  or  chant.  He  was  simply  a  clear 
medium  for  the  poet ;  and,  with  a  per- 
fect adherence  to  metre,  he  yet  brought 
out  the  meaning  as  easily  as  if  he  had 
first  learned  to  talk  in  iambic  penta-| 
meter,  unrhymed. 

Quite  different  is  the  present  practice. 
Mr.   Henry  A.  Clapp,  an  eminent  an- 


68  EDWm  BOOTH 

thority  on  the  theatre,  and  especially 
on  the  acting  of  Shakespeare's  plays, 
touched  upon  this  matter  in  a  fine  appre- 
ciation of  Booth,  contributed,  not  long 
after  his  death,  to  the  Atlantic  Monthly, 
^^  The  vast  majority  of  our  players,''  says 
Mr.  Clapp,  contrasting  them  with  Booth, 
^^  helplessly  and  hopelessly  stumble,  now- 
adays, in  the  attempt  to  interpret  Shake- 
speare's lines  :  if  they  essay  the  rhythm, 
the  meaning  sujQTers  a  kind  of  smooth 
asphyxiation  at  their  hands  ;  if  they 
devote  themselves  to  the  thought,  the 
verse  degenerates  into  a  queer  variety 
of  hitchy  prose."  In  an  interesting  and 
much  talked  of  Shakespearian  ' '  revival ' ' 
last  year,  it  was  sad  to  see  how  the  able, 
accomplished  actor  of  the  chief  charac- 
ter narrowed  and  broke  the  imaginative 
horizon,  how  he  dispelled  the  imagina- 
tive atmosphere  of  his  author,  by  turn- 
ing the  verse  portions  of  the  text  into 
^^a  queer  variety  of  hitchy  prose." 
And  this  was  no  isolated  instance. 


EDWIN  BOOTH  69 

More  remarkable  still  in  Bootli  than 
tlie  interweaving  of  thought  and  music 
which  has  become  almost  a  lost  art,  was 
his  wise  economy  of  emphasis.    JSamleVs 

^^A  little  more  than  kin  and  less  than 
kind," 

MacbeW  s 

^^The  mind  I  sway  by  and  the  heart  I 
bear 
Shall  never  sag  with  doubt  nor  shake 
with  fear," 

logons 

^^The    wine    she    drinks    is    made    of 
grapes"  — 

such  lines  are  usually  given,  even  by 
good  actors,  with  a  hammer- and- anvil 
emphasis  that  Booth,  in  his  maturity, 
always  avoided.  In  such  cases  he  was 
sparing  of  emphasis,  and  relied  upon  the 
subtler  means  of  inflection  and  quality  of 
tone.  Another  refinement  of  art  —  but  / 
to  tell  everything  is  the  secret  of  being " 
a  bore.     It  is  enough  to  say  that  Booth 


70  EDWIN  BOOTH 

was  a  past  master  of  Shakespeare's  verse 
and  prose.  Like  Salvini  and  Coquelin, 
lie  reversed  tlie  dreary  modern  triumpli 
of  the  written  over  the  spoken  word, 
and  proved  to  all  who  had  ears  that 
man  may  continue  to  be  a  speaking  as 
well  as  a  writing  animal. 

As  to  Booth's  Samlet  In  the  first 
place  his  father  was  right :  he  ^^  looked 
like  SamleV^  Gentlemen  of  the  stage 
may  make  themselves  up  for  the  part 
like  Mr.  Beerbohm  Tree,  with  light 
brown  hair  and  beard,  and  the  general 
aspect  of  bookish  troubadours.  Or  they 
may  ^^ discharge  it"  in  ^^your  French- 
crown-coloured  beard,  your  perfect  yel- 
low.''  They  may  put  on  the  red  wig  of 
Fechter,  which  was  red,  by  the  way,  and 
not  at  all  '^ blond'' — it  is  to  be  seen  at 
the  Players'  Club  in  New  York.  But 
however  they  follow  tradition,  or  defy 
it,  they  won' t  look  much  like  Hamlet  to 
all  those  of  us  who  saw  the  dark -haired, 
unbearded  Samlet  of  Edwin  Booth,  his 


EDWm  BOOTH  71 

pale  face  lighted  with  darkly  bright, 
melancholy  eyes.  As  he  looked  when 
he  followed  the  Ghost,  when  he  spoke 
the  brooding  phrases  of  ^^To  be  or  not 
to  be,"  when  he  took  his  wild  farewell 
of  Ophelia  —  at  almost  any  juncture  of 
the  play,  indeed,  Booth's  picture  would 
have  made  a  portrait  of  the  Prince  of 
Denmark. 

The  much  discussed  question  of  the 
Prince's  madness.  Booth  settled  as  the 
vast  majority  of  actors  inevitably  settle 
it.  If  Hamlet  is  mad,  there  is  no  tragedy 
—  for  him  —  except  a  purely  physical 
one.  If,  as  Dr.  Furness  holds,  he  is 
neither  mad  nor  pretending  to  be  so, 
why  then  we  must  wait  a  little  while  for 
a  performer  super-subtle  enough  to  make 
that  plain  to  the  audience  and  at  the 
same  time  get  any  effect  out  of  his  im- 
personation. Booth,  as  he  once  wrote 
to  an  inquiring  correspondent,  thought 
Hamlet  mad  only  in  ''  craft,"  and  there- 
fore, of  course,  represented  him  as  simu- 
lating lunacy. 


72  EDWm  BOOTH 

Booth's  performance  of  the  character, 
as  a  whole,  probably  kept  to  the  last 
more  of  his  early  artificiality  than  was 
allowed  to  linger  in  other  roles ;  more 
v^^  of  the  mannerisms,  or  shall  one  say  man- 
fnev,  of  the  old  school.  Moved  by  a 
laudable  wish  to  preserve  the  imagina- 
tive remoteness  of  Samletj  Booth  began 
(and  long  continued)  to  play  the  part 
on  stilts.  Trustworthy  observers  noted, 
however,  that,  as  time  went  on,  he  grew 
less  and  less  stilted.  A  great  comedian 
once  said  in  my  hearing  that  he  preferred 
Booth's  later  Samlet  because  he  ^'  left 
out  so  much ''  —  in  other  words,  because 
he  simplified  the  poses,  action,  gestures, 
and  ^^  business"  of  the  performance. 
With  a  less  arbitrary  and  exalted  method 
of  showing  the  awfulness  of  HamleVs  ex- 
perience and  his  aloofness  from  common 
life,  came  a  more  humanised  tone  in 
many  passages  and  some  whole  scenes. 
The  gradual  change  was  strikingly  ex- 
emplified in  the  tenderness  of  HamleVs 


EDWm  BOOTH  73 

manner  toward  SoratiOj  after  the  first 
act ;  in  the  seemingly  spontaneous  grace 
of  his  speech  to  the  players  ]  and  in  the 
enlivening,  without  hurt  to  dignity, 
of  his  last  colloquy  with  Eosencrantz  and 
Guildenstern.  Toward  all  his  inferiors 
this  Hamlet  grew  more  gentle,  and  in  his 
whimsical  talk  with  the  Grave-digger  the 
gentleness  was  tinged  with  a  sense  of  hu- 
mour, that  yet  never  lost  the  sense  of 
rank.  After  years  of  the  usual  sardonic 
tone  toward  Folonius,  Booth's  Hamlet 
came  to  recognise  that,  though  the  Lord 
Chamberlain  is  a  tedious  old  man,  he  is 
also  Ophelia's  father.  The  recognition, 
and  the  resulting  access  of  kindness 
toward  Folonius,  were  carried  very  far 
indeed  in  the  newest  Hamlet,  last  year. 

Among  things  that  Booth,  in  the  come- 
dian's phrase,  ^^  left  out,"  was  some  un- 
necessary violence  of  voice  and  action  in 
certain  scenes.  That  this  tempering 
process  would  bring  gain,  not  loss,  of 
force,  was  to  be  expected  5  but  the  gain 


74  EDWIN  BOOTH 

at  several  points,  notably  in  the  scene 
with  Laertes  at  Ophelia^  s  grave,  was  won- 
derful. 

There  lingered  always,  however,  as  I 
have  intimated,  divers  means  and  modes 
of  expression  that  Booth  might  well  have 
left  out.  More  often  than  in  any  other 
of  his  performances  within  my  recollec- 
tion, he  smote  his  brow,  tragedian  fash- 
ion, to  signify  deep  thought.  He  ^Hook 
the  stage''  more  often,  and  adopted  an 
undue  ^^  distance''  of  speech  and  bear- 
ing. And,  though  long  before  I  saw 
Booth,  he  had  exempted  himself  from 
the  reproach  of  ^^  making  statues  all 
over  the  stage,"  he  was,  perhaps,  SisHam- 
letf  too  fond  of  attitudes  that  —  perfect 
in  their  grace — had  a  pictorial  rather 
than  a  dramatic  significance. 

Quite  apart  from  the  important,  never- 
to-be-settled  question  (which  he  settled 
in  practice  on  the  safe  side  for  poetry), 
of  the  middle  way  between  the  ideal  and 
the  familiar,  Booth  did  not  make  clear 


EDWII^  BOOTH  75 

all  Hamlefs  yearning  for  affection,  which 
reads  itself  into  his  talk  in  unexpected 
places.  This  was  of  course  a  matter 
of  conception,  and  did  not  concern 
Booth's  method,  which  easily  compassed 
every  subtlety  of  expression.  It  seems 
also  to  my  recollection  that  Booth,  in 
accord  with  a  correct  general  principle 
of  acting,  tended  to  slur  some  of  the  ab- 
rupt changes  of  mood  in  Samlet.  Mem- 
ory, however,  after  ten  years  and  more, 
may  play  strange  tricks  with  details  of 
acting,  and  I  may  be  wholly  right  nei- 
r  in  this  impression  nor  in  the  equally 
jng  feeling  that  Booth  did  not  enough 
iidicate  SamleVs  strange  freakishness  of 
mood  and  manner.  I!^ot  that  he  should 
have  laid  more  stress  on  the  pretended 
madness.  Too  many  Hamlets  have  been 
^^ funny  without  being  vulgar,''  in  that 
part  of  their  task ;  but  surely,  after 
Hamlet  first  sees  the  Ghost,  a  fever  of  un- 
rest is  one  of  his  most  frequent  states. 
Taken  together  with  the  Prince's  tre- 


76  EDWIN  BOOTH 

mendous,  morbid  activity  of  mind  — 
which  shows  itself  nowhere  more  plainly 
than  in  his  habit  of  exciting  himself  with 
his  own  talk  —  this  feverish  temper  is 
likely  to  produce  at  times  so  much  of 
the  excitement  (dangerously  approach- 
ing the  aberration)  of  mania,  that  an 
actor  who  can  truly  represent  it  need  be 
at  little  pains  to  provide  symbols  of 
counterfeited  mania. 

But,  whatever  many  persons  deemed 
the  faults  of  Booth's  method,  whatever 
some  persons  deemed  the  defects  of  his 
conception,  the  countervailing  excel- 
lences of  the  impersonation,  regarded  as 
a  whole,  distinguished  Booth's  Hamlet 
as  the  best  that  was  known  to  the  gene- 
ration familiar  with  it.  He  thoroughly, 
almost  constitutionally,  it  may  be  said, 
felt  the  deep  essentials  of  the  character ; 
and  he  played  it  in  a  manner  inexpress- 
ibly noble.  That  Samlet  shall  be  a  self- 
examining  dreamer,  loving  the  foreseen 
order  of  the  university,  disconcerted  by 


EDWm  BOOTH  77 

the  ii ...  ^gular  happenings  of  the  world ; 
that  he  shall  be  melancholy,  first  by 
temperament,  then  from  circumstance ; 
that  his  resolve  shall  be  too  weak  to 
make  head  under  the  burden  laid  upon 
a  sensitive  nature ;  —  these  elements  are 
of  the  essence.  And  these  Booth  blended 
and  showed  forth  like  the  great  artist  he 
was.  He  made  us  believe  in  the  spirit- 
uality of  Samlet,  in  his  kinship  with  the 
beyond.  Partridge,  seeing  Booth  in  the 
first  scene  with  the  Ghost,  would  never 
have  exclaimed  :  —  ^^  If  that  little  man 
there  upon  the  stage  is  not  frightened, 
I  never  saw  any  man  frightened  in  my 
life.''  What  Booth  expressed  was  not 
physical  fear,  but  a  solemn  awe,  mixed 
with  the  passionate  and  pitying  affection 
of  which  the  word  ^^ father,''  as  he 
spoke  it,  was  most  eloquent.  From  this 
scene  on,  a  memorable  trait  of  Booth's 
Hamlet  was  a  look  he  had,  as  if  the 
Ghost  had  never  quite  vanished  from  his 
sight.     When  he  spoke  the  words  — 


78  EDWIN  BOOTH 

^^And,  for  my  soul,  what  can  i^Io  to 
that, 
Being  a  thing  immortal  as  itself?''  — 

his  face  lighted,  his  voice  rang  with  the 
certainty  of  an  authentic  revelation. 
Yet  over  the  whole  characterisation 
hung,  like  a  dark  vapour,  the  sense  of 
tragic  fate.  Without  that,  Booth  well 
knew,  there  might  be  the  play  of  ^*  Ham- 
let,'' but  most  of  Hamlet  would  be  left 
out. 


VIL 

^^  Hamlet/'  withdrawn  from  the 
Winter  Garden  on  Marcli  24,  1865,  was 
taken  to  the  Boston  Theatre,  where 
Booth  was  acting,  when,  on  April 
14,  his  younger  brother  killed  the 
President  of  the  United  States  at  the 
national  capital.  Eage  and  grief  pos- 
sessed the  people  of  the  I^orth,  and  all 
thoughtful  persons  throughout  the  South 
knew  that  in  Lincoln  the  South  had 
lost  its  best  and  most  powerful  friend. 
Fifteen  years  later,  in  writing  from  Lon- 
don to  an  old  friend,  of  certain  persons 
of  rank  who  had  shown  him  kindness, 
Booth  added  whimsically:  ^^You  see, 
Fve  been  so  accustomed  to  the  purple -, 
with  kings  and  cardinals  have  I  hob- 
nobbed so  familiarly  since  my  boyhood, 
that  Fm  accustomed  to  these  honours." 
But  the  actor  of  many  tragedies  came 
all  unprepared  to  the  tragedy  that  must, 
perforce,  be  acted  in  his  own  life.     To 


80  EDWIK  BOOTH 

Booth,  a  loyal  citizen,  and  a  man  of 
most  sensitive  nature,  the  shock  would 
have  been  terrible  enough,  even  if  he 
had  had  no  personal  connection  with  it. 
His  letters  during  the  war  to  men  who 
were  in  the  field,  and  to  their  friends  at 
home,  make  it  plain  that  his  country  was 
inexpressibly  dear  to  him.  To  Mrs.  Eich- 
ard  Gary,  the  widow  of  Captain  Gary, 
Booth  had  written,  only  a  month  before 
the  assassination  :  '  ^  Yes,  our  news  (no 
news  now,  though)  is  indeed  glorious. 
I  am  happy  in  it,  and  glory  in  it,  although 
Southern-born.  God  grant  the  end,  or 
rather  the  beginning,  is  now  at  hand. 
For  when  the  war  ceases,  we  shall  only 
have  begun  to  live  —  a  nation  never  to 
be  shaken  again,  ten  times  more  glorious, 
a  million  times  firmer  than  before.''  To 
contemporaries,  although  we  are  prone 
now  to  lose  sight  of  the  fact,  the  loss  of 
Lincoln  brought  not  only  sorrow  and  deep 
resentment,  but  doubt  as  well  concerning 
the  restoration  of  the  Union.     In  per- 


EDWII^  BOOTH  81 

sonal  liiiniiliation  Booth  did  not  forget 
former  hopes  and  present  fears  for  the 
country.  Surely,  however,  he  might 
have  been  forgiven  if  the  individual  had 
obliterated  the  state.  Since  the  death  of 
Washington  no  calamity  had  so  dark- 
ened the  land,  and  for  the  moment  it 
seemed  as  if  all  Booth's  fame  was  of  no 
use  except  to  enable  the  millions  that 
had  seen  him  to  recall  the  face  of  the 
man  whose  brother,  the  murderer  of  the 
wisest  and  best  American,  was  being 
hunted  to  his  vile  death. 

In  his  shame  and  his  consciousness  of 
the  public  feeling  toward  the  assassin's 
family,  Booth  naturally  thought  that  he 
should  never  act  again.  Months  after 
the  awful  day,  he  wrote  to  a  friend,  ^^I 
have  lost  the  level  run  of  time  and 
events,  and  am  living  in  a  misf  ^'  He 
left  the  stage,"  says  Mr.  Winter,  ^^and 
buried  himself  in  obscurity,  and  from 
that  retirement  he  would  never  have 
emerged  but  for  the  stern  necessity  of 


82  EDWIN  BOOTH 

meeting  obligations  incurred  long  before, 
and  only  now  to  be  met  by  bis  active 
resumption  of  professional  industry.'' 
Though  this  was  no  doubt  the  main 
motive,  others  only  less  honourable  im- 
pelled him  to  return.  On  December  20, 
1865,  Booth  wrote  from  Kew  York  to 
Mrs.  Cary,  concerning  his  decision  :  — 
^^  Sincerely,  were  it  not  for  means,  I 
would  not  do  so,  public  sympathy  not- 
withstanding ;  but  I  have  huge  debts  to 
pay,  a  family  to  care  for,  a  love  for  the 
grand  and  beautiful  in  art,  to  boot,  to 
gratify,  and  hence  my  sudden  resolve  to 
abandon  the  heavy,  aching  gloom  of  my 
little  red  room,  where  I  have  sat  so  long 
chewing  my  heart  in  solitude,  for  the 
excitement  of  the  only  trade  for  which 
God  has  fitted  me. ' ' 

Opinion  had  changed  toward  him,  as 
he  implied  in  this  letter  ;  and  whatever 
a  welcome  both  loud  and  deep  could  do 
to  comfort  him,  was  done  when  the  inter- 
rupted run  of  *^  Hamlet"  was  resumed 


EDWIIsr  BOOTH  83 

at  the  Winter  Garden  on  January  3, 
1866.  At  Booth^s  entrance  the  great 
audience  rose,  and  gave  him  in  look  and 
act  every  assurance  of  good- will.  Cheer 
followed  cheer,  and  on  the  stage  flowers 
fell  upon  flowers.  Most  Americans  have 
the  English  love  of  fair  play  that  has 
passed  into  a  proverb,  and  the  drop  of 
quick-silver  which  Colonel  Higginson 
believes  to  be  in  the  blood  of  every 
American,  distinguishing  him  from  an 
Englishman,  perhaps  accounts  for  our 
more  demonstrative  way  of  making  our 
traditional  trait  felt.  So  that  everywhere, 
as  in  New  York,  Booth  was  told  with 
cheers  and  praise  that  the  stage  and  the 
public  needed  him,  and  that  the  sins  of 
the  guilty  were  not  to  be  visited  upon 
his  head.  Thus  he  fell  gradually  into  his 
old  mode  of  life  and  work,  not  forget- 
ting—  that  would  have  been  impos- 
sible —  yet  not  brooding  selfishly  over  the 
awful  occurrence  which  had  threatened 
to  destroy  his  hopes. 


84  EDWIN  BOOTH 

^'Eichelieu/'  the  next  play  to  be  re- 
vived at  the  Winter  Garden,  was  given 
on  February  1,  with  no  less  care  and 
liberality  than  had  been  shown  in  the 
performances  of  ^^Hamlef  One  of 
the  most  noteworthy  *^sets'^  was  a 
room  in  the  cardinal's  palace  at  Euelle. 
Arches  composed  the  perspective,  and 
the  moonlight,  coming  in  through  a 
Gothic  window,  half  showed,  half  hid, 
the  sombre  splendour  of  the  apartment 
in  which  Bichelieii  waited  for  the  packet 
that  should  put  the  conspirators  in  his 
power.  This  representation  of  the  play 
was  in  large  part  the  model  for  the  still 
more  beautiful  and  effective  one  at 
Booth's  Theatre  in  1871.  At  the  same 
time,  by  the  way,  the  novel  device  was 
tried  of  putting  the  French  Court  into 
mourning  —  in  act  fifth  —  for  the  sup- 
posed death  of  the  cardinal. 

On  December  29,  1866,  Booth  and 
Davison  acted  together  as  lago  and 
OthellOj  with  Madame  Methua-Scheller 
as  Desdemona. 


EDWIN  BOOTH  85 

On  January  22  of  tlie  next  year,  after 
a  performance  of  ^^ Hamlet''  and  in  the 
presence  of  a  great  company  of  specta- 
tors, Booth  received  a  medal  that  had 
been  intended  to  mark  the  hundredth 
night  of  the  play,  in  1865.  The  gold 
oval  is  enfolded  with  a  gold  serpent,  its 
head  pendent.  Above  are  the  skull  of 
Toricky  crossed  foils,  and  bunches  of 
Ophelia^  s  flowers.  Bound  the  oval  is  a 
ribbon  of  gold,  bearing  the  motto, 
^^Palmam  qui  meruit  ferat.''  Overall 
is  the  crown  of  Denmark,  from  which 
hang  two  wreaths  of  laurel  and  myrtle. 
In  the  centre,  in  high  relief,  is  a  head  of 
Booth  as  Samlet.  The  brooch  to  which 
the  medal  is  attached,  shows  a  head  of 
Shakespeare  between  the  tragic  and  the 
comic  mask.  The  inscription  on  the 
reverse  is  :  ^^To  Edwin  Booth  :  In  com- 
memoration of  the  unprecedented  run 
of  ^  Hamlet, '  as  enacted  by  him  in  'New 
York  City  for  one  hundred  nights.'' 
But  Judge  FuUerton,  in  his  address  for 


86  EDWIN  BOOTH 

the  committee  of  presentation,  was  care- 
ful to  say: — ^^It  was  thougM  proper 
that  this  presentation  should  take  place 
on  the  occasion  of  the  play  of  ^Hamlet/ 
with  which  your  name  will  ever  be 
associated  5  but  the  choice  of  time  and 
place  for  this  ceremony  intends  a  recog- 
nition of  your  life-long  efforts  to  raise 
the  standard  of  the  drama,  and  to  cheer 
you  in  your  future  endeavours. ' '  When 
Judge  Fullerton  had  finished  speaking, 
he  hung  the  medal  round  Booth's  neck. 
Booth  was  in  the  dress  of  Samlet, 

The  presentation  committee  included 
Major-general  Eobert  Anderson,  Agas- 
siz,  George  Bancroft,  George  William 
Curtis,  Charles  A.  Dana,  and  Bayard 
Taylor. 

The  days  of  the  Winter  Garden  were 
numbered.  On  the  night  of  March  22, 
1867,  Booth  acted  Lucius  Brutus  there, 
and  it  is  supposed  that  the  fire  which  is 
used  in  one  scene  of  Payne's  tragedy 
communicated    itself    to    the    theatre. 


EDWm  BOOTH  87 

Toward  morning,  at  all  events,  flames 
burst  out  below  the  stage,  and  in  a  few 
hours  destroyed  the  house.  With  it 
disappeared  the  scenery  used  in  ^^  Ham- 
let, ' '  '  ^  Eichelieu, ' '  and  ' '  The  Merchant 
of  Venice '^  ;  Booth's  stage  wardrobe, 
including  more  than  one  article  that  his 
father  had  worn  ;  a  large  and  costly  col- 
lection of  theatre  dresses,  jewels,  armour, 
and  furniture  5  many  books  and  manu- 
scripts, several  of  the  latter  being  impor- 
tant; and  portraits  of  Betterton,  the 
elder  Booth,  Garrick,  Kean,  Kemble, 
Macready,  Mrs.  Siddons,  and  many  an- 
other player  not  unknown  to  fame. 
Only  the  associations  of  the  house  re- 
mained, but  these  long  survived  the 
destruction  of  the  fabric  that  had  made 
them  possible.  The  bad  acoustics  and 
the  bad  optics  of  the  house  had  been 
genially  forgotten  by  persons  who  saw 
upon  its  stage  the  favourite  performers  of 
their  youth.  And  play-goers  who  do  not 
yet  lag  superfluous  heard  Jenny  Lind  at 


8S  EDWIN  BOOTH 

the  Winter  Gardeia,  marvelled  at  Char- 
lotte Cushman  as  Scott's  Gypsy  touched 
to  finer  issues,  and  were  swayed  by  the 
strange,  evil  power,  then  waning,  of 
Eachel,  the  greatest  actress  of  her  time. 
Those  who  delighted  in  Blake  and  Bur- 
ton and  Clarke  at  the  Winter  Garden, 
remember  how  the  Comic  Spirit  «vas 
incarnated  in  them.  Before  the  same 
lamps,  as  Caleb  Flummerm  ^^The  Cricket 
on  the  Hearth,''  Jefferson  discovered 
new  secrets  in  his  giffc  of  imaginative 
comedy. 


VIII. 

With  the  destruction  of  the  Winter 
Garden  ended  Booth's  first  organised  at- 
tempt to  give  the  best  plays  in  the  best 
manner.  With  Booth's  Theatre  began  a 
far  more  ambitious  and  more  highly  or- 
ganised attempt  to  do  the  same  thing. 
The  corner-stone  of  the  new  house  was 
laid  on  the  eighth  day  of  April,  1868; 
and  the  first  performance  —  ^  ^  Eomeo 
and  Juliet"  it  was — took  place  on  Feb- 
ruary 3  of  the  following  year.  The 
building,  which  stood  on  the  south-east 
corner  of  Twenty-third  Street  and  Sixth 
Avenue,  was  of  granite,  and  measured 
one  hundred  and  eighty-four  feet  in 
length.  One  hundred  and  fifty  feet  of 
this  made  the  front  of  the  theatre 
proper,  and  the  rest  formed  the  width 
of  a  wing  used  mainly  for  shops  and 
studios.  The  theatre  was  solidly  built, 
and  elaborately  decorated  with  frescoes, 
statues,    and    busts    of   famous   actors, 


90  EDWm  BOOTH      / 

among  them  Gould's  well-known  repre- 
sentation of  the  elder  Booth.  This  was 
midway  of  the  wide  stone  staircase  lead- 
ing from  the  south  end  of  the  lobby  to 
the  balcony.  Above  the  balcony  was 
a  second  balcony,  and  above  that  an 
^  *  amphitheatre. ' '  The  lobby  was  paved 
with  Italian  marble.  The  house  seated 
seventeen  hundred  and  fifty  persons, 
and  there  was  standing  room  for  three 
hundred  more. 

Behind  the  curtain  everything  was 
[done  with  the  same  liberal  hand  and 
measure.  The  footlights  were  fifty-five 
feet  from  the  back  wall,  the  arch  was 
seventy-six  feet  wide,  and  beneath  was 
a  pit,  thirty-two  feet  deep,  blasted  out 
of  the  solid  rock,  into  which  a  scene 
could  be  lowered  out  of  sight.  The  flats 
were  raised  and  lowered  by  hydraulic 
rams,  under  the  stage. 

The  Juliet  to  Booth's  Borneo  on  the 
opening  night  was  Miss  Mary  M' Vicker, 
a  step- daughter  of  J.  H.  M'Yicker,  long 


EDWIK  BOOTH  9l) 

at  the  head  of  theatrical  management  in 
Chicago.  Miss  M'Yicker  was  a  person 
of  energy  and  intelligence,  who  had 
much  practical  knowledge  of  the  theatre 
and  a  slight  but  serviceable  gift  for  act- 
ing. Later  in  the  year  1869  she  took 
permanent  leave  of  the  stage,  and  on 
June  7,  at  Long  Branch,  was  married  to 
Booth. 

As  stage  lovers,  from  the  Veronese  to 
the  Lyonnais,  were  not  for  Booth  or  he 
for  them,  we  must  conclude  that  his  ex- 
traordinary good  looks,  his  repute  as 
an  actor,  a  good  company,  and  a  rich 
^^ production'^  in  the  imposing  new 
house,  reconciled  the  public  to  a  ten 
weeks'  run  of  ^^Eomeo  and  Julief  It 
gave  way  on  April  12  to  ^^ Othello,'' 
Booth  playing  the  Moor;  and  on  May 
31  Edwin  Adams,  a  popular  young  actor 
of  that  day  who  had  been  the  Mercutio 
and  the  lago  of  the  two  revivals,  began 
a  two  months'  round  of  romantic  char- 
acters.   Mr.  Jefferson,  as  Bip  vanWinMe^ 


92  EDWIN  BOOTH 

finished  the  summer.  Miss  Kate  Bate- 
/  man^  Hackett  —  the  only  great  Falstaff 
I  of  the  second  half  of  the  nineteenth  cen- 
/  tury  —  and  Mrs.  Waller,  followed  Mr. 
Jefferson  ;  and  only  on  January  5,  1870, 
did  Booth  again  appear  at  his  own  thea- 
tre. This  reappearance  was  in  ^^Ham- 
lef  (with  ^^ stage  accessories''  that 
were  ^^fine  beyond  precedent"),  which 
ran  till  March  19.  After  Booth's  Sam- 
lety  Sir  Giles  Overreaeh,  Claude  Melnotte, 
and  Macbethj  John  S.  Clarke  played  a 
series  of  comic  rdles  —  among  them  De 
Boots  and  Mr.  Toodle  —  from  April  18 
till  May  28.  During  the  same  year  Mr. 
Jefferson  acted  Eip  van  WinJcle  one  hun- 
dred and  forty-nine  times  in  succession. 
In  1871  Booth  gave  ^^Eichelieu,"  with 
unexampled  splendour ;  ^*  Othello,"  and 
* '  The  Fool' s  Eevenge ' ' ;  revived  ^ '  Win- 
ter's  Tale,"  with  Barrett  as  Leontes;  and 
acted  BenedicJc  for  the  first  time  in  New 
York.  Barrett  played  James  Harebell 
in  ^^The  Man  of  Airlie"  (taken  from  a 


EDWIN  BOOTH  93^ 

German  piece  called  ^^  Laurel  Tree  and 
Beggar's  Staff'')?  ^^^  ^^^^  E-  Owens, 
Caleb  Flummer.  These  performances 
would  have  been  enough  to  distinguish 
any  theatre,  but  the  year  was  made  yet 
more  remarkable  by  Miss  Cushman's  re- 
turn to  the  stage  after  an  absence  of  ten 
years,  and  by  a  notable  revival  of  ^^  Ju- 
lius Caesar."  Miss  Cushman  showed  un- 
abated power  as  Queen  KatJiarinej  Lady 
Macbeth,  and  Meg  Merrilies, — the  three 
characters  with  which  her  fame  is  mainly 
associated.  '^Julius  Caesar,"  in  which 
at  different  periods  during  the  run 
Booth  played  Brutus,  Cassius,  and  An- 
tony, was  given  eighty-five  times  between 
Christmas  Night,  1871,  and  March  16, 
1872. 

This  dry  enumeration,  read  in  the 
light  of  understanding,  is  a  noble  and 
pathetic  bit  of  history.  Noble,  because 
it  is  a  record  of  what,  in  the  finest  spirit, 
a  great  actor  tried  to  do  for  the  stage, 
and  therefore  for  the  country.     Pathetic, 


/ 

fk  EDWIN  BOOTH 

because  the  Mgli  attempt  failed.  Audi- 
ences, large  in  numbers  and  excellent  in 
quality,  were  seldom  lacking  at  Booth's 
Theatre ;  nor  did  Booth's  ambition  and 
the  performance  in  which  it  took  shape, 
ever  lack  recognition  and  praise  from  the 
discriminating  few  or  the  capricious 
many.  But  the  cost  of  the  theatre  had 
been  more  than  a  million  dollars,  the 
running  expenses  were  enormous,  and 
Booth  had  not  the  gift  of  financial  man- 
agement. So  disaster  was  the  result,  in 
spite  of  constant  public  support  given  to 
the  enterprise,  and  in  spite  of  the  very 
large  sums  that  Booth  made  on  the  road 
and  sent  home  to  his  treasury.  Mr. 
Aldrich  has  preserved  the  following  let- 
ter, which  Booth  wrote  to  him  on  one  of 
these  trips. 

"  POBTSMOUTH,  Octr.  3rd  1872. 
''My  dear  Tom: 

^^Tho'  centuries  have  flown  since  we 
last  corresponded  and  —  for  aught  we 
know  —  both  of  us  may  be  dead  and  gone 


EDWII^  BOOTH  95 

—  I  feel  as  if  you  were  close  at  hand 
today.  In  this  quaint  old  town  —  your 
native  heath,  I  believe  —  everything  re- 
calls the  ^  Bad  Boy'  T.  B.  Esquire.— It's 
raining  like  blazes  and  things  in  general 
look  blue.  I  hope  I  shall  not  be  obliged 
to  call  on  you  for  aid  to  get  away.  Of 
course  you  know  where  I  am  to  ^  Hamlet ' 
to-night  —  a  man  (the  janitor,  or  proprie- 
tor, perhaps)  tells  me  you  went  to  school 
just  under  the  old  Temple  —  it  seems  to 
me  that  it  must  have  been  hundreds  of 
year  ago. — I  wish  you  were  here  to  show 
me  about  the  city  —  I  am  sure  there  is 
much  of  curious  interest  here;  I  like 
these  old  ^bygones'  and  the  really  excel- 
lent modern  hotel  seems  out  of  its  element 
altogether,  while  the  Temple  seems  quite 
at  home.  I  bought  some  Brette  Harte 
paper  collars  (!)  here  and  asked  for  some 
ditto  Aldrich  cuffs,  but  to  its  shame  be 
it  spoken  the  town  does  not  contain  them. 
A  prophet  at  home,  you  know  the  prov- 
erb. .  .  . 


96  EDWm  BOOTH 

I  began  to  write  this  very  close  think- 
ing I  had  much  to  say,  but  you  know  it 
/  is  my  habit  to  begin  quite  vigorously 
/  and  terminate  abruptly  —  you  may  re- 
member an  evening  at  Fields'  — lang 
syne.  All  I  can  do  now  to  keep  up  ap- 
pearances is  to  tell  you  what  I've  been 
doing  since  we  parted.  You  know  I 
then  had  a  fine  place  at  Long  Branch  — 
which  I  transferred  to  my  partner 
(Robertson)  as  so  much  cash  in  buying 
his  interest  in  the  theatre  — he  owned  f 
of  it.  I  owned  several  other  pieces  of 
real  estate,  all  of  which  he  took  at  a  very 
liberal  figure  —  and  I  thus  got  free  from 
a  sense  of  restraint  that  annoyed  me  ex- 
cessively. Since  then  the  theatre  has 
been  doing  well  and  at  present  is  in  a 
glorious  way  with  Boucicault,  while  I 
am  off  scouring  the  provinces  for  the 
stray  ducats  that  lie  around  loose.  So 
far  my  trip  has  been  very  pleasant  in 
every  way  —  with  here  and  there  a  weak 
town,  but  the  old-fashioned  fun  I  have 


EDWIN  BOOTH  97 

in  extemporising  stages  and  scenes  com- 
pensates me  for  the  ^sparcity '  of  shekels. 
It  reminds  me  very  much  of  my  early 
California  tramps  5  I  have  my  own  com- 
pany—  no  rehearsals,  and  the  travel  is 
done  by  short  stages  of  not  more  than 
two  hours  the  longest. — I  do  wish  you 
were  here  tonight  —  to  see  me  bury 
Ophelia  '  above  board '  ;  there  is  but  a 
six  X  six  square  hole,  into  which  my 
large-legged  Laertes  could  not  leap  — 
and  so  Tve  ^ faked'  (as  we  mummers 
style  a  make-shift)  a  grave  above  the 
stage ;  Ophelia's  coffin,  mind  you,  is 
packed  with  Yorick's  skull  and  bones, 
swords,  spears,  etc.,  while  we  travel  — 
this  is  a  secret,  but  you're  behind  the 
scenes. 

^^Well  —  finding  myself  without  a 
home  I  bought  a  place  at  Cos  Cob  (go  to 
your  map  and  scour  Connecticut)  —  quite 
near  old  Putnam's  pump  at  Horse-neck 
—  from  Barras,  author  of  Blk  Crook. 
Here's  a  mingling  of  black  spirits  and 


98  EDWIN  BOOTH 

grey  for  you ;  Barras  and  Shakespeare, 
Booth  and  Ballet,  legs  and  legitimate! 
It's  a  delightfal  spot  —  a  fairy  spot  — 
with  every  kind  of  pleasure  close  at 
hand,  boating,  bathing,  fishing  and 
driving  at  your  very  doorstep.  I 
hope  —  should  you  ever  pass  that  way 
(on  the  Boston  &  New  Haven  E.E.) 
you'll  ask  to  be  dropped  at  Cos-Cob 
— an  hour's  ride  from  New  York  — 
and  see  my  retreat  5  I  hope  to  pass  a 
good  long  vacation  there  this  next 
spring  and  summer .... 

^'I  hope  your  dear  ones  are  all  well 
and  that  your  home  is  as  happy  as  you 
deserve  and  desire  it  to  be,  in  which 
pious  wish  Mary  joins  me. 

^'With   kisses    for    those    twa    siller 
heads,  and  love  to  yourself  and  wife, 
''Ever  Yours, 

''Ned." 

It  will  be  seen  from  this  letter  that 
Booth,  by  buying  out  his  partner,  had 


EDWIlsT  BOOTH  99 

become  sole  proprietor  of  tlie  theatre. 
In  1874  he  failed.  A  detailed  account 
of  Booth's  Theatre  may  be  found  in  Mr. 
Winter's  lAfe  and  Art  of  Edwin  Booth, 
Mr.  Jefferson  once  said  of  his  manage- 
ment: ^^  Booth's  theatre  is  conducted 
as  a  theatre  should  be  —  like  a  church 
behind  the  curtain  and  like  a  counting- 
house  in  front  of  it."  It  is  evident  from 
the  facts,  however,  that  the  accounts 
were  a  good  deal  muddled. 


IX. 

All,  through  the  troubled  time  Booth 
showed  the  courage,  the  constancy,  and 
the  consideration  for  others,  that  were  a 
part  of  his  nature.  The  published  let- 
ters to  his  little  daughter,  which  begin 
in  1869,  are  peculiarly  touching.  Many 
—  most,  fathers  less  burdened,  would 
have  had  a  less  intimate  care  for  a  little 
girl's  work  and  play.  She  must  apply 
herself  to  French,  and  write  him  another 
letter  all  in  that  language  5  she  should 
learn  to  skate  —  he  is  doing  so  5  he  tries 
to  plan  for  their  meeting.  Once  he 
preaches  a  little  homily  drawn  from  his 
own  young  experience ;  and  at  another 
writing  he  asks,  in  the  very  thick  of  his 
troubles  : —  ^^ Don't  you  think  it  jollier 
to  receive  silly  letters  sometimes  than  to 
get  a  repetition  of  sermons  on  good  be- 
haviour? It  is  because  I  desire  to  en- 
courage in  you  a  vein  of  pleasantry, 
which  is  most  desirable  in  one's  corre- 


EDWIN  BOOTH  101 

spondence,  as  well  as  in  conversation, 
that  I  put  aside  the  stern  o\6.  father,  and 
play  jpa2>a  now  and  then.''  Two  of  the 
letters  are  from  St.  Valentine,  a  canary 
bird,  and  Pip,  a  dog.  Each  is  full  of 
spirited  onomatopoeia,  such  as  would  de- 
light a  child,  and  in  the  originals  Booth 
had  drawn  small  figures  of  the  corre- 
spondents for  whom  he  merely  ^^held 
the  pen.''  In  the  same  year,  the  year 
of  the  bankruptcy,  he  speaks  out  his 
real  mind  to  his  friend  Bispham  :  — 

^^This  is  by  no  means  the  heaviest 
blow  my  life  has  felt,  and  I  shall  recover 
from  it  very  shortly  if  my  creditors  have 
any  feeling  whatever.  ... 

'^I  gave  up  all  that  r.^^n  hold  dearest, 
wealth  and  luxurious eas*i }  n?oi^  do  I  com- 
plain because  that  unlucky,  t  slip  ,'twixt 
the    cup  and  lip ' '  has  '^  :>pilled   ^i\  ^^\ 
tea. 

^'With  a  continuance  of  the  health 
and  popularity  the  good  Lord  has  thus 
far  blessed  me  with  I  will  pay  every 


102  EDWIN  BOOTH 

Sou/  and  exclaim  with  Don  Ccesar  — 

though  in  a  different  spirit — ^Tve  done 

great  things.'     If  you  doubt  me,  ask  my 

creditors!'' 

As  Burke's  words  were  things,  so 
Booth's  became  deeds.  He  gave  up  to 
his  creditors  the  whole  of  his  private 
and  personal  property,  not  excepting 
what  might,  one  conjectures,  have  been 
fairly  kept  as  ^^ tools  of  his  trade," 
namely  books  and  theatrical  wardrobe. 
Then,  after  a  rest  at  his  wife's  house  at 
Cos-Cob  (already  spoken  of  in  the  letter 
to  Mr.  Aldrich),  Booth  applied  all  his 
splendid  powers  to  the  payment  of  his 
debts.  But  never  again  did  he  act  as  his 
own  or  £|,ny one, ease's  manager. 

oKe  seems  'UOt  even  to  have  stipulated 
,  for,  decent  conjfiettocein  supporting  play- 
,  ;efs  or-  decent  oa§te  and  liberality  in  the 
^* production."  The  ^Stars''  in  per- 
formances of  Shakespeare  to-day  are  not 
always  of  the  first  magnitude,  and  the 
other  members  of  the  cast  would  some- 


EDWm  BOOTH  103 

times  have  been  less  unsuccessful  in  other 
lines  of  life;  but  so  well  trained  are 
these  flesh- and-blood  marionettes  of  ours, 
so  gorgeous  are  the  dolls'- clothes  lavished 
on  their  backs,  so  handsome  is  every- 
thing about  them,  so  brisk  and  crisp  the 
stage  management,  that  no  one  who  did 
not  see  Madame  Janauschek,  Booth,  and 
Signor  Salvini — after  the  adoption  of  his 
biglottic  system — can  be  made  to  under- 
stand what  sort  of  background,  human 
and  scenic,  was  provided  for  their  genius. 
In  those  years,  at  all  events,  during 
which  I  used  to  see  Booth  often  —  the 
years  from  1878  to  1891  —  among  the  few 
exceptions  to  the  wretchedness  of  his 
presentment  were  his  appearances  under 
the  direction  of  Lawrence  Barrett,  and 
at  the  Boston  Museum,  where  he  was 
assisted  by  a  company  whose  general 
competence  had  only  the  drawback  of 
a  comparative  inexperience  in  playing 
Shakespeare.  On  most  other  occasions 
the    courts    of   the    Plantagenets,    the 


104  EDWIN  BOOTH 

Doges,  and  the  Macbeths,  were  forlorn 
and  homesick  places.  Court,  battle-field, 
rialto,  and  blasted  heath,  were  peopled 
alike  by  the  dreary,  impossible  theatre- 
folk  whom  Booth  himself  used  to  call 
^ '  dogans. ' '  ^ '  Dogans, ' '  pray  mark,  was 
a  class  term  given  in  humourous  tolerance 
to  ignorant,  conceited  players.  Of  in- 
dividuals Booth  spoke  with  unvarying 
kindness,  treated  them  with  the  utmost 
consideration,  and  praised  them  when  he 
could.  As  his  assistants  were  by  no 
means  all  dogans,  he  could  often  give  him- 
self that  pleasure.  Perhaps  all  of  them, 
even  the  dejected  supers  —  who  does  not 
remember  those  Venetian  senators?  — 
would  have  brightened  up  a  little  if  the 
scenes  and  chairs  and  tables  and  clothes 
had  been  better.  ^^ Hamlet''  seems  in 
recollection  the  worst  of  all  as  to  these 
matters.  I  remember  one  piece  of  hag- 
gard scenery  held  in  place  by  the  visible 
hand  of  a  shifter  5  I  remember  a  certain 
burly,  Milesian  Horatio  ;  and  a  fat  Queen 


EDWII^  BOOTH  105 

that  roamed  about  lier  halls,  clad,  for 
outer  garments,  in  what  appeared  to  be 
a  purple  piano- cover  bordered  with  gilt 
paper.  And  alas,  poor  Ghost!  I  can 
never  forget  one  of  him  who,  in  solemnly 
lifting  up  his  arm,  disclosed,  through  the 
green  gauze  in  which,  twenty  years  ago, 
ghosts  always  travelled,  that  he  had 
wisely  put  on  a  red  flannel  shirt  before 
revisiting  the  Danish  climate.  It  was  an 
honest  ghost,  that  let  me  tell  you. 

People  complained  of  the  untoward 
conditions,  but,  though  complaining, 
they  went  still  to  see  the  gracious  person 
who  was  so  ill  attended.  He  himself 
moved  about  the  stage,  apparently  un- 
conscious of  any  lack  ;  always  admirably 
dressed  for  his  part;  letter-perfect  in  the 
lines,  and  acting  always  with  a  con- 
science even  when  he  could  not  com- 
mand his  mood.  Perhaps  the  poor  sup- 
port and  shabby  appointments  enabled 
Booth  to  make  more  money  —  there 
were  those  who  said  so  5   and  certainly 


106  EDWIN  BOOTH 

his  managers  profited  by  the  arrange- 
ment. One  calumny,  however,  should 
be  forever  silenced  —  the  charge  that 
Booth  feared  the  rivalry  of  able  players, 
and  preferred  to  shine  by  contrast,  like 
Queen  Elizabeth  among  her  ugly  waiting- 
maids.  On  the  contrary,  not  only  did 
Booth  in  his  own  term  of  management 
call  about  him  the  best  people  that 
money  could  hire,  but  he  was  always 
glad  to  act  with  the  greatest  of  his  con- 
temporaries. It  was  not  a  self- distrust- 
ing or  weakly  jealous  man  who  acted 
with  Salvini,  Janauschek,  Eistori,  Cush- 
man,  Irving,  Davison,  and  several  other 
Germans  of  high  repute  in  their  own 
country.  With  Miss  Cushman  Booth 
once  acted  two  weeks  in  different  plays ; 
with  Mr.  Irving  for  six  weeks,  alternat- 
ing the  parts  with  him  in  ^'Othello'' 5 
with  Madame  Modjeska  during  a  whole 
season.  It  was  generally  observed  that, 
the  more  formidable  Booth's  ^  ^  opposite, ' ' 
the  better  he  played.    As  to  jealousy,  if 


EDWm  BOOTH  107 

lie  felt  it,  he  was  not  least  an  actor  in 
Ms  concealment  of  it.  In  ^Hhe  profes- 
sion'' he  was  renowned  for  kindness  and 
fair  dealing,  as  well  as  for  an  open- 
handed  charity  that  was  remarkable 
even  in  a  calling  famed  for  generosity. 
And  two  of  the  distinguished  persons 
with  whom  he  played,  have  told  me  that 
they  found  his  courtesy  almost  unexam- 
pled. He  was  always  ready  to  adopt 
their  *^ business''  or  their  arrangement 
of  a  scene.  ^^  He  was  willing  to  do  any- 
thing except  come  to  rehearsal." 

In  the  fall  of  1875,  then  (later  than  he 
had  intended,  on  account  of  a  serious 
accident  at  Cos-Cob) ,  Booth  began  his 
brilliantly  successful  struggle  to  pay  his 
debts  and  to  make  another  fortune. 
From  that  time  the  outward  history  of 
his  life  is  little  but  the  record  of  tour 
after  tour  in  the  United  States,  varied 
with  two  successful  visits  to  England  and 
a  brief  professional  experience  in  €rer- 
many  which  was,  perhaps,  the  highest 
triumph  in  his  forty  years  of  acting. 


108  EDWm  BOOTH 

On  October  25,  1875 — he  was  released 
from  bankruptcy  in  March  of  that  year 
—  Booth  began  an  engagement  at  Daly's 
Fifth  Avenue  Theatre  in  which  he 
played  for  the  first  time  Shakespeare's 
Eichard  11.  Although  it  had  been 
in  Kean's  repertory  and  in  that  of  the 
elder  Booth,  the  character  had  somehow 
fallen  out  of  favour  on  the  stage,  and 
Edwin  Booth  had  never  seen  it.  He 
played  Eichard  II  exquisitely.  Dur- 
ing the  same  season  he  gave,  for  the  first 
time  in  New  York,  Shakespeare's  ^^King 
Lear"  according  to  his  own  adaptation. 
As  a  young  man  he  used  the  old  stage 
version,  made  by  Tate  and  modified  by 
John  Philip  Kemble.  This  he  gave  up 
about  1860,  allowed  himself  ten  years  to 
forget  it,  and  then  —  in  Chicago  —  with- 
drew ^Hhe  hook  "  that  Kahum  Tate  had 
put  in  ^^the  nostrils  of  Leviathan,"  and 
began  to  play  Shakespeare's  Lear. 

In  1876,  beginning  at  Baltimore  Jan- 
uary 3,  ending  at  Bowling  Green,  March 


EDWIlSr  BOOTH  109 

3,  Booth  gave  fifty-two  performances  in 
the  South,  under  the  management  of 
J.  T.  Ford.  As  he  had  not  acted  on  the 
Atlantic  coast  south  of  Baltimore  since 
1859,  the  wish  to  see  him  was  very  great. 
People  came  from  many  miles  round  to 
Charleston,  Eichmond,  and  the  other 
towns  that  Booth  visited.  Crowds  wel- 
comed him  at  every  stopping-place,  and 
often  at  way-stations  the  cars  had  to  be 
locked,  to  keep  out  the  multitude.  Leg- 
islatures and  ^^ society''  adapted  their 
hours  to  Booth's  appearances.  ^^No 
actor  had  ever  caused  such  excitement, 
or  received  such  a  tribute,  in  the  south- 
ern country." 

The  next  excursion  was  to  California, 
'  from  which  Booth  had  long  been  refus- 
ing offers.  Xow  he  needed  money  too 
much  to  refuse.  After  a  journey  of 
twelve  days  from  Chicago,  he  reached 
San  Francisco  on  September  5,  twenty 
years  to  a  day  from  the  time  he  had  left 
it.     The  receipts  of  an  eight  weeks'  en- 


110  EDWm  BOOTH 

gagement  in  San  Francisco  were  ninety- 
six  thousand  dollars.  Mrs.  Clarke  stat3s 
that  for  the  season  beginning  in  "New 
York  in  November,  1876,  and  ending  in 
Boston  on  May  19,  1877,  Booth  received 
one  hundred  and  twenty-one  thousand 
three  hundred  and  fifty-three  dollars. 
In  1877,  according  to  the  same  author- 
ity, the  debts  were  paid. 

That  year  saw  also  the  execution  of 
a  long-cherished  design.  Booth  cut  and 
arranged  fifteen  of  the  plays  in  his  rep- 
ertory. These,  with  many  stage  direc- 
tions, and  introductions  and  notes  by 
Mr.  Winter,  were  published  under  the 
general  title  of  The  Frompt  Book,  The 
first  of  the  prompt  books  was  ^^Eichard 
III, ' '  the  motley  Gibber  version  of  which 
Booth  had  given  up  in  1876.  The  other 
plays  of  the  series  are  ^ '  Hamlet, ' '  ^  ^  Mac- 
beth,'' ^^ Othello,''  ^^  King  Lear,"  ^^Eich- 
ard  the  Second,"  ^^ Henry  the  Eighth," 
'^Much  Ado  about  I^o thing,"  ^^The 
Merchant  of  Venice,"    ^^ Katharine  and 


EDWIN  BOOTH  111 

PetrucMo''  (the  little  that  Garrick  left 
of  ^^The  Taming  of  the  Shrew"), 
^^Eichelieu/'  ^^The  FooPs  Eevenge/' 
^^ Brutus/'  ^^ Buy  Bias/'  and  ^^DonCse- 
sar  de  Bazan.''  Each  play-book  con- 
tains sufficient  directions  for  putting  the 
play  on  the  stage.  There  is  none  of  that 
taking  Shakespeare  apart  and  putting 
him  together  differently  which  makes 
the  Daly  renderings  an  irritating  puzzle 
to  those  who  have  more  than  a  bowing 
acquaintance  with  the  text.  The  Young 
Person  was  perhaps  too  much  considered 
by  Booth.  For  other  reasons,  of  course, 
he  cut  the  plays  freely,  and  when  they 
are  cut  they  bleed.  But  Mrs.  Penden- 
nis,  merely  by  practising  the  art  to  skip, 
might  follow  a  Prompt-Book  perform- 
ance well  enough  with  her  copy  of  the 
dramatist ;  and  in  this  edition,  as  a 
whole,  Shakespeare  is  treated  with  such 
reverence  as  actors  and  managers  have 
seldom  paid  him.  It  is  worth  noting 
here  as  a  matter  of  record  that,  in  spite 


112  EDWIN  BOOTH 

of  Booth's  long  habit  of  playing  the 
^^ restored''  text  of  Shakespeare,  Miss 
Marlowe  gave  her  first  performances  of 
Juliet  in  a  version  that  retained  the 
old  stage  ending.  This  ending,  how- 
ever, Miss  Marlowe  soon  abandoned. 
Booth  himself  went  back  to  the  Gibber 
Bichard  for  one  season,  or  part  of  a  sea- 
son, in  the  last  few  years  of  his  acting. 
One  startling  incident  broke  into  the 
long  years  of  Booth's  prosperity.  He 
was  shot  at  in  M'Yicker's  Theatre, 
Chicago,  on  April  23,  1879.  The  play 
was  ^^Eichard  II,"  and  suddenly,  just 
as  Booth  was  speaking  the  prison  solilo- 
quy in  the  last  act  which  begins, 

^^  I  have  been    studying    how    I    may 
compare 
The  prison  where   I   live,    unto  the 
world," 

a  man  in  the  first  balcony  fired  two 
pistol  shots  at  him.  ^^  Mr.  Booth  slowly 
rose  "  —  says  an  eye-witness,  in  The  Dial 


EDWm  BOOTH  113 

of  June  16,  1893— ^^  stepped  to  tlie 
front  of  tlie  stage  and  looked  inquiringly 
towards  the  balcony.  He  saw  the  would- 
be  assassin,  saw  the  pistol  raised  for  a 
third  shot,  turned  around,  and  very 
deliberately  walked  back  out  of  sight. 
In  the  meanwhile,  his  assailant  was  seized 
from  behind,  and  was  not  permitted  to 
pull  the  trigger  for  the  third  time.  What 
particularly  impressed  me  about  the 
whole  affair  was  the  coolness  displayed 
by  Mr.  Booth.  He  was  playing  the  part 
of  a  king,  and  did  not  for  a  moment  for- 
sake the  kingly  impersonation.  After 
a  short  time,  Mr.  Booth  reappeared, 
begged  the  audience  to  excuse  him  for 
a  few  moments  longer,  while  he  should 
speak  to  his  wife,  finally  came  upon  the 
stage  again,  and  finished  the  act." 
Mark  Gray  was  the  name  of  the  lunatic 
who  fired  the  shots.  Booth  had  one  of 
the  bullets  mounted  in  a  gold  cartridge 
cap,  and  had  engraved  upon  it  —  ^'  From 
Mark    Gray    to   Edwin    Booth."      The 


114  EDWIN  BOOTH 

northerly  humour  of  the  inscription  is 
said  by  his  friends  to  have  been  as 
characteristic  of  him  as  his  courage  in 
the  danger  it  commemorates.  Four  days 
after  the  shooting  Booth  wrote  to  Mr. 
E.  C.  Stedman: — ^^My  temporary  self- 
control  gave  way  after  a  day  or  two  to  a 
highly  nervous  excitement  —  a  condition 
similar  to  that  which  I  believe  Shake- 
speare illustrates  by  RamleVs  frivolity 
after  the  ghost  is  gone,  and  the  terrible 
tension  of  his  brain  is  relaxed.  I  have 
a  ghostly  kind  of  disposition  to  joke 
about  the  affair  which  is  hardly  control- 
lable.'' Booth  must  have  differed  much 
from  all  other  true  artists  if  this  and 
many  another  ^^  emotion  remembered  in 
tranquillity ''  did  not  help  to  vivify  and, 
as  it  were,  to  found  his  art. 

Of  a  deeper  tragedy  than  the  moment's 
peril  in  Chicago,  was  what  had  happened 
years  before  at  an  evening  party  in  ITew 
York.  "There  was  another  evening" 
—  Mr.   Howells  tells  the  story  in    his 


EDWm  BOOTH  115 

Literary  Friends  and  Acquaintance  — 
^^  There  was  another  evening  when,  after 
we  all  went  into  the  library,  something 
tragical  happened.  Edwin  Booth  was 
of  our  number,  a  gentle,  rather  silent 
person  in  company,  or  with  at  least  little 
social  initiative,  who,  as  his  fate  would, 
went  up  to  the  cast  of  a  huge  hand  that 
lay  upon  one  of  the  shelves.  ^  Whose 
hand  is  this,  Lorry  % '  he  asked  our  host, 
as  he  took  it  up  and  turned  it  over  in 
both  his  own  hands.  Graham  feigned 
not  to  hear,  and  Booth  asked  again, 
^  Whose  hand  is  thisV  Then  there 
was  nothing  for  Graham  but  to  say, 
^It's  Lincoln's  hand,'  and  the  man  for 
whom  it  meant  such  unspeakable  things 
put  it  softly  down  without  a  word.'' 


X. 

In  1880  Bootli  made  another  visit  to 
Europe.  He  had.  long  intended  it.  A 
breakfast  was  given  him  at  Delmonico's 
on  June  15,  at  which  many  well-known 
men  spoke  —  among  them  Mr.  Jefferson, 
William  Warren,  Lawrence  Barrett,  Mr. 
Whitelaw  Eeid,  Mr.  Stedman,  the  Eev. 
Eobert  CoUyer,  and  Parke  Godwin.  Mr. 
Winter  read  a  poem.  On  June  30  Booth, 
with  his  wife  and  daughter,  sailed  for 
England.  After  a  brief  tarry  at  Strat- 
ford-on-Avon  and  a  journey  through 
Switzerland,  in  the  course  of  which  he 
saw  and  much  disliked  the  ^^  Passion 
Play''  at  Oberammergau,  he  returned  to 
England.  On  the  evening  of  November 
6,  at  the  new  Princess's  Theatre,  Booth 
appeared  in  London  as  Samlet.  Since 
the  choice  of  character,  which  was  urged 
by  Mrs.  Booth,  seemed  in  the  eyes  of 
many  persons  like  a  challenge  to  Mr. 
Irving,  that  may  have  accounted  for  the 


EDWm  BOOTH  117 

temperate  (verging  upon  frigid)  tone  of 
most  of  the  professional  critics,  in  such 
praise  as  they  bestowed.  Booth,  it  must 
also  be  remembered,  thought  ill  of  his 
own  performance  on  that  occasion,  and 
—  Americans  were  not  yet  the  fashion. 
Many  qualified  judges,  however,  admired 
the  American  Hamlet^  and,  on  the 
whole,  both  audiences  and  the  news- 
paper press  received  him  with  honour. 
When  the  bill  was  changed  to  '^  Eiche- 
lieu,''  Booth's  performance  excited  an 
enthusiasm  that  the  critics  shared  with 
the  public.  He  wrote  to  Mr.  Aldrich 
on  Sunday  after  the  first  night  of 
^^Eichelieu,''  when  he  knew  only  the 
public  mind. 

"Novr21'80, 
"St.  James's  Hotel 
''  My  dear  '  T.  B,'  " Piccadilly. 

^^The  sight  of  your  dear  old  fist  was 
like  a  metaphorical  handshake.  Since 
^he  receipt  of  your  letter  I've  made  a 
*  double-header, '  as  Samlet  and  BicJie- 


118  EDWIN  ..^OTH 

lieu.     The  former  called  forth  a  series  ; 
of  silly  articles — some  for,  some  against  ; 
me,  but  none  worthy  to  be  read  twice,  i 
.  .  .  All  agree  (even  the  worst  fault-  I 
finders)  that  my  English  is  perfect  and  \ 
that    Tm  master    of   blank- verse,    but  : 
my  old  style  of  acting  is  out  of  date,   \ 
etc.      To  read  all  the  opinions  would  j 
set   you    laughing    hyena-like,    for    no  | 
two  agree.  .  .  .  Bichelieu,  last  night,  set  ! 
the  people  wild.     Old  Eyder,  who  acted  \ 
many    years    with    Macready,    played  \ 
Joseph  with    me    and    after  the    play 
disclosed  that  I  had  upset  his  idol.     The  \ 
dear  old  man  was  quite  over- come  by  his  I 
emotion  and  could  barely  speak.     To-  \ 
night  we  called  at  Lady  Martin's,  once  : 
a  famous  actress  [Helen  Faucit],  now  a  \ 
nob,  and  at  her  house  met  several  who  ! 
were  describing  me  when  we  entered. 
If  I  have  a  long  enough  swing  at  these 
folks  Fm  pretty  sure  to  divide  the  cur- 
rent of  opinion  —  if  I  do  not  succeed  in 
turning  it  entirely.     The  actors  all  wel- 


EDWm  BOOTH  119 

come  me  with,  kindly  greetings  —  some- 
thing very  unusual.  The  company  is  as 
good  as  any  in  London  and  the  best  here 
is  far  worse  than  those  we  complain  of  in 
America.  .  .  .  Boughton  has  been  here 
twice  and  has  seen  me  in  both  parts  — 
Tve  been  too  busy  to  visit  him  yet. 
Dined  once  with  Smalley  and  met  Lady 
Gordon,  Huxley,  and  a  nephew  of 
Macaulay.  The  first  named  and  Mary 
have  exchanged  calls  several  times,  but 
the  rest  of  London  is  still  out  of  town, 
I'm  told,  still  we've  had  a  peep  at 
Nobbydom. 

''  Our  passage  over  was  like  a  sail  up 
the  Hudson  —  so  with  the  Channel, 
which  we  crossed  three  times.  Had  no 
occasion  to  hunt  up  ^  Galloot '  —  for 
when  I  decided  to  appear  this  fall  in 
London,  I  deferred  my  continental  trip 
and  contented  myself  with  a  flying  visit 
(a  sort  of  bird's-eye- view)  to  Ammergau  ; 
with  the  Fassion  Flay  I  was  rather  dis- 
appointed—  I  could  not  get  rid  of  the 


120  EDWm  BOOTH 

theatrical  effect  of  it,  of  the  truly  dra- 
matic, or  religious  (of  which  IVe  read  so 
much),  there  was  very  little  perceptible. 
I  have  twice  written  and  shall  telegraph 
my  protest  against  its  being  produced  at 
BooWsj  for  it  is  a  subject  out  of  place  in 
the  play-house.  Indeed  I  think  it  has 
lost  whatever  sacred  sentiment  it  may 
have  possessed  at  Ammergau.  The  Sun- 
day papers  are  full  of  kindlier  notice, 
(of  Eichelieu)  than  they  had  last  weeks 
but  not  'till  to-morrow  will  I  know  the 
verdict  of  the  standard  papers.  You 
know  that  ^ first  nights'  occur  on  Sat- 
urday here  and  not  till  Monday  does  a 
poor  devil  know  his  fate.  But  the  uni- 
versal howls  of  approval  that  shook  the 
theatre  last  night  and  what  I've  already 
heard  to-day  —  assure  me  that  ^I've 
got  'em ! ' 

^ '  Did  you  ever  use  a  stylographic  pen  1 
Don't !  I've  two  I'd  like  to  lend,  lose, 
or  give  away  to  some  ^  dearest  foe '  — 
but  the  derned  things  cling  to  me  and 


EDWIN  BOOTH  121 

ink  my  taper  tips.  I  can't  get  rid  of 
'em,  and  the  worst  of  it  is  they've 
spoiled  my  use  of  other  pens.  Kill  the 
first  man  that  offers  you  one  —  especially 
if  he  be  an  agent  for  their  sale.  .  .  . 

' '  Some  day  send  me  another  line  or  two. 
'Tis  uncertain  how  long  I  shall  remain 
here,  and  what  my  future  movements 
will  be. 

^^  You  see  below  an  illustration  of  my 
stylographic  abilities  — ain't  I  smart ! 

the  pen  I 

^^  Mary  and  Edwina  join  Edwin  in  his 
love  to  you  all  and  to  the  two  twins, 
too.  i  i  jg^^j,  g^j^^  forever, 

^^E.    B." 

On  Christmas  Eve  Booth  said  in  a 
letter  to  Mr.  Stedmanthat  ^^Eichelieu" 
had  '^warmed  them  up,"  but  that  in 
his  opinion  the  houses  would  have  been 
quite  as  full  if  he  had  kept  on  with 


122  EDWIN  BOOTH 

^^ Hamlet.''  He  wrote  also  that,  ''out- 
side of  the  ^res^/'  he  had  had  ''all  that 
one's  heart  could  desire  in  the  way  of 
courtesy  and  encouragement." 

' '  Lear ' '  was  given  with  extraordinary 
success  on  February  14,  1881.  E.  L. 
Blanchard,  a  well-known  and  influential 
critic  of  the  time,  after  naming  —  in 
The  Era  —  several  passages  in  which 
"Booth's  delivery  and  acting  were 
superb''  added,  "We  are  disposed  to 
say  that  nothing  finer  of  the  kind  has 
been  known  upon  the  English  stage." 
Like  praises  came  from  many  other 
critics.  Among  the  distinguished  per- 
sons who  saw  Booth  do  Lear  in  Lon- 
don, were  Dean  Stanley,  Charles  Eeade, 
and  Lord  Tennyson.  The  poet  asked 
the  player  to  dine  with  him,  and 
remarked  at  dinner,  with  his  island 
frankness,  "Most  interesting,  most 
touching  and  powerful,  but  not  a  bit 
like  Xear." 

The   engagement   at    the    Princess's 


EDWII^  BOOTH  123 

ended  on  March  26  with  '^The  Mer- 
chant ' '  and  ^  ^  Katharine  and  Petruchio. ' ' 
Booth  now  proposed  to  Mr.  Irving  to 
give  a  number  of  parts  in  a  series  of 
morning  performances  at  his  theatre,  the 
Lyceum.  Mr.  Irving  immediately  ac- 
cepted the  proposal,  but  soon  suggested 
that  the  performances  should  be  given  at 
night,  that  ^^ Othello"  should  be  the 
only  piece,  and  that  he  and  Booth  should 
alternate  the  characters  of  Othello  and 
lago.  This  generous  suggestion  Booth 
gladly  accepted,  and  made  his  first  ap- 
pearance at  the  Lyceum  on  the  2d 
of  May,  1881.  He  played  the  Moor ; 
Mr.  Irving,  for  the  first  time,  the 
Ancient,  Miss  Terry  was  Desdemona. 
The  densely  crowded  house  seemed  to 
contain  everybody  of  importance  then 
in  London,  and,  in  spite  of  doubled 
prices,  it  continued  to  be  crowded  until 
June  19,  when  the  joint  performances 
ended.  It  was  a  cruel  stroke  of  fortune 
that  this  delightful  engagement,  in  which 


124  EDWIN  BOOTH 

everything  was  done  for  Booth's  honour 
and  pleasure,  should  have  been  played 
under  a  shadow  that  dimmed  all  the 
brightness.  Mrs.  Booth  had  long  been 
ill  of  a  distressing  malady.  During  the 
engagement  at  the  Princess's  Booth  had 
written  to  a  friend :  —  ^*  Add  to  this  [the 
nightly  acting  of  Lear]  the  anxiety  on 
Mary's  account,  and  loss  of  sleep,  and 
you  may  guess  how  sane  I  am.  I  some- 
times feel  as  though  my  brain  were  tot- 
tering on  the  verge.  Perhaps  acting 
mad  every  night  has  something  to  do 
with  it.  I  once  read  of  a  French  actress 
who  went  mad  after  a  continued  run 
of  an  insane  character  she  personated." 
Now,  in  June,  Mrs.  Booth  had  grown  so 
ill  that  her  return  to  America  was 
thought  necessary.  On  the  thirteenth 
of  the  following  November  Mrs.  Booth 
died  in  New  York. 

After  Booth's  return  from  England  he 
lived  in  New  York,  and  made  frequent 
visits  to  his  mother,  at  Long  Branch  5 


EDWIN  BOOTH  125 

and  to  old  Mends.  The  dramatic  sea- 
son of  1881-82,  beginning  on  October  3 
at  Booth's  Theatre,  he  passed  in  Amer- 
ica. 

On  New  Year's  Day,  1882,  Booth  sent 
Mr.  Aldrich  an  odd  gift,  with  the  sub- 
joined letter.  Mr.  Aldrich  kindly  al- 
lows me  to  use  his  explanatory  note  as 
preface :  — 

^^Mr.  Booth  afterward  gave  me  a  dif- 
ferent version  of  the  story.  An  eccen- 
tric old  party  named  Buggies  invented 
an  instrument  to  imitate  the  crowing  of 
a  cock  —  to  be  used  in  Samlet j  Act  I, 
scene  1.  The  imitation  was  so  perfect 
as  to  throw  the  audience  into  convul- 
sions of  laughter.  After  one  night's 
trial,  Booth  didn't  dare  to  use  the  toy, 
and  the  horrid  thing  —  it  was  a  sort  of 
trumpet  with  pneumonia  —  was  sent  to 
me.  No  one  but  the  inventor  however, 
could  work  it.  I  think  that  was  its 
only  commendable  feature. 

^^T.  B.  A." 


126  EDWIK  BOOTH 

''Dear  Tom, — 

*^IVe  concluded  to  dispense  with  the 
Kok  in  Hamlet.  Therefore  I  send  it  to 
you  for  the  edification  of  ye  twins  and 
the  delight  of  their  parents  —  at  early 
dawn.  This  remarkable  instrument  will 
crow  you  like  any  sucking  hen,  if  prop- 
erly manipulated  ;  but  how  that's  done 
I'm  at  a  loss  to  tell.  All  that  I  know 
about  it  is  that  its  creator,  a  Mr.  Bug- 
gies, put  it  to  his  lips  and  set  all  the 
cocks  acrowing,  one  dark  night,  in 
[word  illegible].  To  aid  Buggies  and 
avenge  myself  on  some  fraternal  foe  (or 
friend)  I  bought  the  infernal  thing  and 
promised  to  use  it  in  Hamlet  as  an  espe- 
cial advertisement  for  him.  After  the 
darling  came  into  my  possession  and 
Buggies  had  vamosed  I  forgot  the  secret 
of  its  crow,  so  couldn't  use  it  to  scare 
my  Danish  daddy's  shade.  Then  I  de- 
termined to  bestow  it  on  some  one  I 
loved,  some  one  with  children,  boy-chil- 
dren, twins,  in  order  to  keep  my  mem- 
ory alive  in  the  brain  of  their  Papa. 


EDWIN  BOOTH  127 

^'So,  here  it  is!    Aren't  'em  pretty*? 

^^  When  yon' re  thirsty  'twill  serve  for 

lager.     Buggies  believes  his  bully  old 

fortune  is  made  by  Booth  buying  his 

blooming  bugle  ! 

^^Ta-ta! 
^^Till  time  stops 

^^  Yours 
"  H.  N.  Y.,  1882."  '^  Edwin. 

June  26,  1882,  found  Booth  in  Eng- 
land again,  beginning  a  second  and 
highly  successful  engagement,  devoted 
to  ^^Eichelieu"  and  ^^The  Fool's  Ee- 
venge,"  at  the  Princess's  Theatre.  After 
this  ended,  on  August  5,  Booth  went 
over  to  Switzerland  with  his  daughter, 
and  then  —  on  September  11  —  began  a 
tour  of  the  provinces  which  the  illness  of 
Mrs.  Booth  had  rendered  impossible  the 
year  before.  In  Dublin,  although  people 
compared  Booth's  Samlet  unfavourably 
with  the  impersonations  of  Mr.  Irving 
and  Barry  Sullivan,  the  actor  himself 


128  EDWIK  BOOTH 

was  heartily  welcomed  and  his  acting, 
in  general,  mucli  applauded.  At  Aber- 
deen, at  Dundee,  and  at  Edinburgh, 
^^the  audience  rose  and  cheered  him  at 
the  end  of  his  performances.''  Every- 
where the  managers  asked  him  to  return. 

In  December  of  that  year  Booth  wrote 
to  Mr.  Anderson  : — ^^  Saw  ^  Much  Ado ' — 
the  finest  production,  in  every  respect, 
I  ever  saw.  Terry  is  Beatrice  herself  5 
Irving' s  conception  and  treatment  of  the 
part  IBenediclc]  are  excellent." 

On  December  27  Booth  left  London  for 
Berlin,  where,  on  January  11,  1883,  he 
began  an  engagement  at  the  Eesidenz- 
theater.  This  was  renewed,  on  the 
twenty-third,  for  twelve  additional  per- 
formances. !N'o  ^^ starring"  tour  was 
ever  more  modestly  made  than  Booth's  in 
Grermany,  or  with  less  help  from  puffs, 
direct,  oblique,  or  circumstantial.  The 
first  American  actor  who  had  ever 
visited  Germany  used  none  of  the  means 
and  methods  of  advertisement  that  are 


EDWII^  BOOTH  129 

sometimes  thouglit  peculiarly  American. 
^^In  the  Leipziger  TageblatV^ — wrote  a 
correspondent  of  tlie  ISTew  York  Nation  — 
^^a  newspaper  otherwise  filled  with  the 
gossip  of  the  day,  I  found  but  a  single 
brief  paragraph  on  Booth  before  his 
representation  of  Hamlet  in  Leipzig  on 
March  19.  The  theatre  posters  of  the 
same  date,  as  well  as  the  theatre  adver- 
tisements in  the  newspapers,  contained 
nothing  beyond  the  usual  laconic  an- 
nouncement (not  even  in  full-faced  type, 
as  is  generally  the  case) :  Urste  Gastdar- 
stellung  des  Serrn  Edwin  Booth  —  Ham- 
let :  —  JEEerr  Edwin  Booth,  IsTeverthe- 
less,  for  the  three  evenings  on  which  he 
played  in  Leipzig,  every  seat  in  the 
Stadttheater  not  occupied  by  the  regular 
subscription  audience  could  have  been 
sold  twice  over.''  At  Berlin  the  fact 
that  the  Court  was  in  mourning  did  not 
keep  Booth's  engagement  from  being 
very  brilliant  indeed.  The  enthusiasm 
of  the  German  actors  was  one  of  the 


130  EDWIN  BOOTH 

most  remarkable  and  most  gratifying  ele- 
ments in  Booth's  success.  On  the  stage 
of  the  Eesidenztheater,  at  the  close  of 
the  Berlin  engagement,  a  member  of  the 
company  made  an  address  in  English, 
and  at  the  same  time  Booth  was  given  a 
silver  laurel  wreath,  bearing  the  fol- 
lowing inscription : —  *^To  Mr.  Edwin 
Booth,  the  unrivalled  tragedian,  in  kind 
remembrance  of  his  first  engagement  in 
Germany,  January  and  February  1883. '' 
Similar  beautiful  tokens  he  received  at 
Hamburg,  at  Bremen,  and  at  Leipzig. 
In  these  cities,  at  Hanover,  and  in 
Vienna,  there  were  very  few  opposing 
voices  to  the  consensus,  critical  and 
popular,  of  approval  that  was  both  loud 
and  deep.  In  a  letter  from  Berlin  I 
find  Booth  saying  :  — ^^I  shall  be  glad 
when  I  get  through  with  this  tour  — 
it  is  terrible  work,  as  I  have  mentally 
to  recite  in  English  what  the  Germans 
are  saying,  in  order  to  make  the  speeches 
fit. ''     In    less    than    a    month,    how- 


EDWIN  BOOTH  131 

ever,  he  was  won  over  to  declaring:  — 
^^  I  feel  more  like  acting  than  I  have  felt 
for  years,  and  wish  I  could  keep  it  up 
here  in  Germany  for  six  months  at  least.'' 
In  the  same  letter  (to  Mr.  Anderson, 
February  18,  from  Hamburg)  Booth 
writes  :  —  ^^The  actors  and  actresses 
weep  and  kiss  galore,  and  the  audience 
last  night  formed  a  passage  from  the 
lobby  to  my  carriage  till  I  was  in  and 
off ;  yet  I  was  nearly  an  hour  in  the  the- 
atre after  the  play  (^Lear').  Having 
had  a  surfeit  of  public  applause — for 
it  seems  as  though  I  had  it  through 
father,  being  with  him  so  long  —  the 
most  is  but  as  little  to  me  ;  but  this  per- 
sonal enthusiasm  from  actors,  old  and 
young,  is  a  new  experience,  and  still 
stimulates  me  strangely." 

The  significance  of  Booth's  German 
success  cannot  easily  be  exaggerated.  In 
Germany  most  if  not  all  of  Shakespeare's 
plays  are  acted;  in  English-speaking 
countries,  a  beggarly  few.  And  although, 


132  EDWIN  BOOTH 

to  our  thinking,  German  critics  of 
Shakespeare  are  often  bent  on  proving 
themselves  mad,  especially  when  they 
write  about  ^^ Hamlet,''  German  actors 
of  Shakespeare  average  to  be  the  best  in 
the  world,  and  have  had  among  them 
players  as  great  as  Devrient  and  Barnay. 
At  least  ten  educated  Germans  under- 
stand English,  to  one  educated  English- 
man, or  American  of  English  race, 
who  understands  German.  Booth,  then, 
played  in  an  atmosphere  that  is  charged 
with  Shakespeare ;  in  theatres  that  are 
stored  with  standards  and  traditions. 
He  was  right  in  regarding  the  German 
tour  as  the  chief  professional  experience 
of  his  life. 


XL 

Of  Mr.  Booth  off  the  stage  I  can  say 
only,  Tantum  vidi  Yirgilium.  I  saw  him 
just  once  in  his  own  person,  within  the 
next  few  years  after  his  return  from  Ger- 
many. The  precise  year  and  month 
have  escaped  me,  but  the  scene  was 
Park  Street  in  Boston  ;  the  time,  a  very 
cold  and  very  bright  winter  morning. 
The  street  lay  white  under  the  sun,  and 
the  Common  stretched  white  beyond. 
Doubtless  there  were  other  people  about. 
I  don't  remember  seeing  any:  I  remem- 
ber only  that  I  caught  sight  of  Booth  at 
some  distance,  coming  down  the  hill 
toward  me.  As  he  drew  near,  walking 
slow,  I  watched  him  intently  5  and  even 
when  we  came  face  to  face,  it  is  to  be 
feared  that  I  still  gazed.  There  was  no 
harm  —  Mr.  Booth  must  long  before 
have  formed  the  habit  of  being  stared  at ! 
And  it  was  a  reverential  stare.  Such 
was   my    deep    respect    for   him    and 


134  EDWIN  BOOTH 

all  lie  had  done,  that,  not  knowing 
then  the  fate  of  Charles  Lamb's  ^^  merry 
Mend,''  Jem  White,  I  came  near  taking 
off  my  hat  to  a  gentleman  I  had  never 
''met."  It  is  a  question  whether,  at 
that  moment,  Booth  would  have  per- 
ceived even  such  an  attack,  for  he  seemed 
to  be  looking  in,  not  out,  with  the  cu- 
rious, introverted  gaze  of  his  own  Hamlet 
Let  no  one  suppose  that  his  expression 
was  subdued  to  a  professional  melancholy, 
or  that  he  had  the  consciously  uncon- 
scious air  which  so  often  marks  the 
celebrity  in  his  walks  abroad.  But  as 
he  came  toward  me  on  that  glittering, 
bitter  day  —  stepping  lightly  though  not 
quickly,  his  head  a  little  bent  and  his 
hands  in  his  pockets  —  he  looked  like 
Hamlet  in  a  great-coat.  I  thought  then 
that  I  had  never  seen  so  sad  a  face,  and 
I  have  never  yet  beheld  a  sadder  one. 

Booth  on  the  stage,  I  saw  in  many 
characters  between  1878  and  his  retire- 
ment in  1891:  —  Hamlet,  Lear,  Othello^ 


EDWIN  BOOTH  135 

lagOy  Macbeth,  Marcus  Brutus,  Bichard 
III,  ShylocJc,  Benedick,  FetrucMo,  Bicfie- 
Ueu,  and  Bertuccio.  I  saw  him  often  as 
Hamlet,  often  as  lago;  in  each  of  the 
other  parts  except  Benedick,  several 
times.  Bichard  II  he  played  for  a  few 
years  midway  of  his  career,  and  during 
the  first  half  Borneo  was  in  his  repertory, 
though  he  did  not  give  it  often.  Cassius, 
Antony,  Cardinal  Wolsey,  and  King  John, 
he  also  acted.  Early  characters  were 
Sir  Giles  Overreach  in  Massinger's  ^^A 
l^ew  Way  to  Pay  Old  Debts,"  Bon 
Ocesar  de  Bazan,  Sir  Edward  Mortimer 
in  ^^The  Iron  Chest,''  Claude  Mel- 
notte,  and  Fescara  in  ^^The  Apostate.'' 
After  a  long  time  of  disuse.  Booth 
*^ revived"  these  parts  for  a  season  or 
two,  about  eight  or  nine  years  before  his 
death.  I  never  saw  any  of  them,  and 
do  not  regret  the  loss  of  any  except  Sir 
Giles,  which,  by  all  competent  accounts. 
Booth  played  superbly.  And  Sir  Giles 
is  of  course  a  great  part  —  outside  of 


136  EDWm  BOOTH 

Shakespeare  there  is  none  greater  in 
English.  As  for  Sir  Edward  Mortimer^ 
Fescaray  and  Brutus  (another  of  Booth's 
performances  that  went  by  me),  why, 
George  Colman  the  younger,  Shiel,  and 
even  John  Howard  Payne,  are  dead 
authors.  Genius  can  galvanise  but  not 
quicken  them.  As  for  Claude  MelnoUe, 
he  is  a  lover  suited  to  his  Pauline  or  to 
Laura  Matilda ;  and  Booth,  it  has  been 
already  said,  could  not  do  lovers,  real  or 
unreal.  Eome's  Antony  he  played,  but 
Cleopatra's  Antony  he  did  not  even  try 
to  play. 

As  for  Don  Ccesar^  he  belongs  to  com- 
edy quite  as  much  as  to  romance ;  and 
comedy  was  not  Booth's  trade,  though 
he  had  the  good- will  of  a  sinister, 
unnamed  muse,  half-sister  to  Thalia. 
Without  her  help  his  lago  and  his  Bieh- 
ard  could  not  have  been  what  they  were. 
But  to  all  except  blind  lovers  of  Booth's 
genius  it  seemed  as  if  he  kept  comedy  in 
his  repertory  only  to  show  that,  like 


EDWm  BOOTH  137 

^^Todgers'S;"  lie  could  do  it  when  he 
chose.  Whoever  saw  his  BenedicJc,  at  all 
events  in  Booth's  last  public  years,  with- 
out having  read  ^ '  Much  Ado,' '  would  not 
have  made  acquaintance  with  the  true 
BenedicJc,  As  he  took  away  most  of  the 
joy  and  all  the  panache  from  Bon  Ccesar, 
so  he  desiccated  of  all  his  mirth  the 
Elizabethan  courtier-scholar-wit  whom 
Shakespeare  chose  to  place  in  Messina. 
Intellectually,  the  performance  was  full 
of  stimulus  and  entertainment,  l^o  one 
else  could  speak  the  very  difficult  and 
often  archaic  text  as  Booth  spoke  it, 
with  all  its  variety,  all  its  sweet  yet 
lively  rhythm.  The  soliloquies,  which 
bristle  with  points  of  danger  for  every- 
one except  a  man  of  brains  who  is  at  the 
same  time  an  artist  in  speech,  Booth 
talked  out  quietly  with  himself  and 
merely  allowed  the  audience  to  overhear. 
One  among  many  of  these  felicities  was 
the  inimitable  cadence  of  afterthought 
with  which  the  hearty  affirmation,  '^The 


138  EDWIN  BOOTH 

world  must  be  peopled,"  dropped  into 
the  mock  apology,  ^^When  I  said  I 
would  die  a  bachelor,  I  did  not  think  I 
should  live  till  I  were  married.''  This 
Benedick  had  charm,  too,  and  careless 
ease  ;  but  he  was  a  brown-tinted  person- 
age, who  missed  the  essential  nature  of 
the  character  —  a  nature  that,  in  terms 
of  the  wind,  would  be  a  fresh  easterly 
with  the  sun  shining  bright  5  or,  in 
terms  of  apples,  ^*  a  pleasant  tart."  The 
war  of  Booth's  Benedick  with  Beatrice 
was  not  a  ^^ merry  war."  He  suggested 
rather  the  compromise  that  Leonato,  act- 
ing upon  a  hint  from  Beatrice,  offers  her 
as  the  right  husband:  ^^Half  Signior 
Benedick's  tongue  in  Count  John's 
mouth,  and  half  Count  John's  melan- 
choly in  Signior  Benedick's  face."  He 
was  pleasant  to  see  and  very  pleasant  to 
hear,  but  he  waked  no  laughter.  His 
grimly  frolicsome  Fetruchio,  graceful  and 
alert  as  it  was,  had  the  same  defect. 
Yet    Booth's    friends    delighted  in  his 


EDWII^T  BOOTH  139 

inirth-provoking  gift  of  telling  good 
storieSj  and  they  often  felt  the  presence 
of  that  hnmour  in  his  conversation  which 
shows  itself  occasionally  in  his  letters. 
He  says  somewhere  in  a  letter  that  com- 
edy is  excellent  practice  for  serious 
actors,  on  the  principle  that  those  move 
easiest  who  have  learned  to  dance. 

It  has  already  been  said  that,  as  an 
actor  of  heroic  parts,  Booth  surpassed 
every  rival  in  his  own  language.  In 
Shakespeare's  four  chief  tragedies  there 
are  three  such  characters  —  LeaVj  Othello, 
and  Macbeth,  Hamlet  is  beginning  to  be 
recognised  as  a  character  part.  Kow, 
tried  by  an  absolute  standard  —  not  by 
the  merits  of  other  actors  —  Booth's 
renderings  of  Lear,  Othello,  and  Macbeth, 
fell  short  of  what  lovers  of  Shakespeare 
long  to  see  on  the  stage,  as  his  Shylock, 
Bichardj  lago,  EichelieUy  and  Bertuccio, 
never  did.  And  they  are  character 
parts,  all. 

Booth's  Macbeth,  impressive,  in  many 


140  EDWIN  BOOTH 

of  its  elements,  was  less  a  unit  and 
therefore  less  satisfying  than  most  of 
his  other  characters  of  Shakespeare.  He 
showed,  often  with  startling  distinct- 
ness, the  Macbeth  of  physical  courage 
and  moral  cowardice.  Booth  also  made 
clear,  to  a  degree,  the  Macbeth  whose  re- 
deeming quality  is  such  love  as  he  bears 
his  wife ;  the  warrior  of  a  barbarous  age 
was  scarcely  visible ;  and  the  triumph 
of  the  impersonation  was  in  Booth's  in- 
dication of  surface  sensibility,  with  a 
bed  rock  of  selfishness  below.  In  this 
skilful  psychology  and  in  a  few  single 
scenes,  Booth  was  at  his  best.  The  ban- 
quet scene,  in  particular,  was  appalling, 
and  stood  out  even  among  his  studies  of 
episodes  in  which  the  supernatural  plays 
a  part.  But  Booth  did  not  succeed  in 
leaving  a  vivid,  unified  impression  of  a 
complex  personality.  It  was  as  if  he  had 
been  attracted  by  separate  phases  of 
Macbeth,  instead  of  living  with  the  char- 
acter as  he  li9'd  lived  with  his  Samlet, 


EDWIN^  BOOTH  141 

his  LeaVj  or  his  lago.  The  poet  whom 
Shakespeare  has  incorporated  with  the 
murderer  in  Macbeth,  had  all  his  dues 
from  the  melody,  variety,  and  imagina- 
tion with  which  Booth  spoke  the  verse. 

If  Booth's  Macbeth,  in  comparison  with 
other  of  his  achievements,  was  unsatisfy- 
ing for  vague  reasons,  his  Lear  was  in- 
complete for  very  definite  reasons  indeed. 
All  that  intellect,  imagination,  pathos, 
and  a  perfect  command  of  histrionic 
means  could  do  for  the  character,  was 
present  in  Booth's  rendering.  ^Nor 
would  the  theatricality  of  the  first  act 
have  been  a  serious  objection  to  it ; 
Shakespeare,  following  his  original,  is 
theatrical  there  himself.  A  more  im- 
posing physique  and  greater  tempera- 
mental force  were  what  Booth  lacked  for 
the  exhibition  of  the  upheaval  and 
deracination  of  Learns  nature.  Another 
modern  actor  had  exactly  the  endow- 
ment for  this  character  which  Booth 
had  not.     Salvini  —  in  words  used  by 


142  EDWm  BOOTH 

George  Henry  Lewes,  in  his  famous 
little  book  on  acting,  to  lay  down  a 
general  principle  —  Salvini  had  ^'the 
qualities  which  give  the  force  of  animal 
passion  demanded  by  tragedy  [by  some 
tragedies,  Lewes  might  better  have  said], 
and  which  cannot  be  represented  except 
by  a  certain  animal  power."  As  Lear, 
unhappily,  the  Italian  was  poor  in  other 
qualities  '  *  demanded  by  tragedy  ^ '  — 
namely,  spirituality  and  imagination; 
and  there  seemed  even  to  be  some  con- 
fusion in  his  idea  of  the  character. 
Booth  and  Salvini,  fused,  would  have 
given  the  stage  such  a  King  Lear  as  it 
may  some  day  see. 

In  Lear  the  honours  were  thus  divided 
between  the  two  actors.  In  Othello  the 
balance  was  overwhelmingly  with  Sal- 
vini. Whether  or  not  his  conception 
was  justifiable  —  and  there  are  good 
arguments  on  each  side  —  his  perform- 
ance of  the  Moor  was  by  far  the  most 
moving  portrayal  of  an  heroic  part  that 


EDWIK  BOOTH  143 

I  ever  saw.  It  was  literally  tlie  '*  whirl- 
wind of  passion''  of  whicli  Hamlet 
speaks.  Yet  Salvini  never  lost  control 
of  himself  or  the  character.  He  rode 
in  the  whirlwind  and  directed  the 
storm. 

Although  Booth,  as  an  actor  of  heroic 
parts  of  poetic  tragedy,  was  so  definitely 
superior  to  his  English-speaking  contem- 
poraries, it  was  in  certain  character 
parts  that  he  did  himself  most  entire 
justice.  In  these,  of  course,  he  had 
formidable  rivals,  whose  merits  by  com- 
parison with  his  cannot  be  considered 
here.  But  as  Bichelieu,  as  Bertuccio,  and 
as  lago,  he  was  unapproached  5  and 
these  impersonations  were  probably  his 
best,  with  ShylocJc,  Bichard  Illy  and 
Hamlet,  as  a  good  second  group.  In 
certain  passages  of  Lear,  Hamlet,  and 
other  characters.  Booth's  genius  took  a 
higher  range  of  thought  and  imagina- 
tion than  can  be  found  in  Bichelieu, 
or  Bertuccio,  or  lago.      His  renderings 


144  EDWm  BOOTH 

of  these  tliree  parts,  however,  were  al- 
most perfect.  Exquisitely  proportioned 
and  almost  flawlessly  acted,  they  were, 
in  sum  and  in  detail,  among  the  very 
few  finest  achievements  of  the  modern 
stage. 


Booth's  years  after  his  return  from 
Germany  were,  as  lie  once  put  it,  ^^te- 
diously successful.''  He  revived  some 
old  parts,  but  played  no  new  ones.  He 
bought  a  house  in  Chestnut  Street,  Bos- 
ton, and  for  a  year  or  two  he  called  it 
home.  There,  on  May  16,  1885,  Booth's 
daughter,  Edwina,  was  married  to  Mr. 
Ignatius  Grossmann.  On  the  seventh  of 
the  same  month,  at  the  Academy  of  Music 
in  ^ew  York,  Booth  had  played  ^^  Mac- 
beth" with  Eistori.  During  the  spring 
of  1886  he  gave  a  few  performances  with 
Salvini  in  'New  York,  Boston,  and  Phila- 
delphia. I  remember  their  third  act  of 
''  Othello  "  as  if  I  had  seen  it  last  night. 
It  shines  now  in  my  memory  as  the 
greatest  acting  I  have  ever  seen.  Cole- 
ridge thought  that  to  see  Kean  was  like 
reading  Shakespeare  by  flashes  of  light- 
ning. When  Salvini  played  Othello  and 
Booth  lago,  there  were  no  flashes  because 


\ 

146  EDWIN  BOOTH  ] 

there  were  no  periods  of  darkness.     It  : 
was    like    reading    Shakespeare    by   a 
mighty  fire  that  rose  and  fell  with  the  I 
I)assion  of  the  scene,  and  lighted  a  re-  : 
flection  of  itself  in  the  face  of  each  be- 
holder. 

Even  more  talked  of  than  the  appear- 
ances with  Salvini,  yet  far  less  worthy  | 
of  note,  was  the  ^^testimonial''  benefit 
to  Lester  Wallack,  at  the  Metropolitan 
Opera  House,  on  May  21,  1888.  Booth 
acted  Hamlet  and  Madame  Modjeska 
Ophelia  —  an  auspicious  combination. 
The  Metropolitan,  however,  is  much 
too  large  for  anything  except  opera  and 
spectacle.  And  in  such  a  cast,  assem- 
bled for  one  occasion,  when  everybody 
is  somebody  —  John  Gilbert  was  Folo- 
nius  at  the  Wallack  benefit,  Mr.  Jeffer- 
son and  William  Florence  were  the 
Grave-diggers — what  should  be  team- 
work disintegrates  itself  into  a  dramatic 
go-as-you-please.  The  more  celebrities 
in  such  a  company,  and  the  more  cele- 


EDWm  BOOTH  147 

brated  they  are^  the  more  the  whole 
thing  becomes  a  mere  oddity,  a  theatri- 
cal curio  which  a  man  may  be  glad  to 
say  he  has  seen,  but  which  he  is  not 
sorry  to  forget. 

In  1886,  Lawrence  Barrett  became 
Booth's  manager,  and  at  the  same  time 
directed  a  tour  of  his  own.  Beginning 
next  season,  the  two  acted  prosperously 
together,  except  during  1889-90,  until 
the  death  of  Barrett,  March  20,  1891. 
Although  the  prosperity  was  broken  for 
a  little  by  a  stroke  of  paralysis,  on  April 
3,  1889,  which  temporarily  hurt  Booth's 
speech,  still  he  struggled  on.  In  the 
season  of  1889-90  he  and  Madame 
Modjeska  appeared  together  in  a  round 
of  plays.  As  their  methods  harmonised, 
the  art  of  each  gained  from  that  of  the 
other.  Indeed,  during  the  steady  de- 
cline of  Booth's  physical  powers,  from 
the  warning  stroke  until  the  hour  of  his 
retirement,  his  art  won  triumphs  of  a 
new  sort.     His  knowledge,  inherited  and 


148  EDWIK  BOOTBt 

acquired,  of  the  stage  and  all  its  devices, 
was  extraordinarily  minute,  and  tlius  art  i 
assisted  waning  nature  in  many  subtle 
ways.  Occasional  returns  of  strength 
there  were,  too,  when  Booth  would  act 
for  a  whole  evening  with  much  of  his 
old  spirit,  and  with  a  skill  that  had 
never  before  been  quite  so  delicately 
fine. 

But  even  his  art,  and  will,  and  cour- 
age, could  not  keep  up  forever  man's 
losing  game  with  Death,  which  Huxley 
grimly  depicted  and  stanchly  played. 
Barrett's  piteous  end  was  apparently  the 
signal  for  Booth  to  drown  his  book  and 
break  his  staff,  for,  on  the  fourth  day  of 
April,  1891,  in  '^Hamlet,''  quietly,  and 
—  as  it  was  like  him  to  do  —  without 
hint  of  farewell,  he  brought  his  public 
life  to  a  close. 

He  was  ^ Hired  of  travelling,''  he  said  ; 
he  had  been  ^ travelling  all  his  life." 
And  so,  for  the  two  years  of  it  that  re- 
mained,  he  settled  himself  in  his  own 


EDWIK^  BOOTH  149 

rooms  at  the  Players'  Club,  the  largely 
planned  and  beautifully  appointed  house 
with  which,  in  1888,  he  had  made  a 
home  for  the  homeless  and  ever  travel- 
ling profession.  This  great  benevolence 
crowned  a  life  that  was  as  full  of  benev- 
olence as  it  was  of  grief  and  triumph. 
Ko  man  could  have  been  more  mindful 
or  more  wisely  mindful  than  Booth  —  in 
his  gift  of  The  Players  —  of  the  deep 
saying  that  every  man  is  a  debtor  to 
his  profession. 

Booth  was  marked  out  by  Fortune  for 
honour  and  despite.  He  felt  the  strange- 
ness of  his  lot,  and  reflected  much  upon 
the  mysteries  of  life  and  death.  Helped 
by  his  religion,  a  kind  of  stoical  Chris- 
tianity, he  came  to  some  definite  conclu- 
sions in  the  face  of  all  the  mysteries. 
^^  All  my  life,''  he  wrote  to  Mr.  Winter, 
in  1886,  ^^has  been  passed  on  ^picket 
duty,'  as  it  were.  I  have  been  on  guard, 
on  the  lookout  for  disasters  —  for  which, 
when  they  come,  I  am  prepared.     There- 


150  EDWm  BOOTH 

fore  I  have  seemed,  to  those  who  do  not  i 
really  know  me,  callous  to  the  many 
blows  that  have  been  dealt  me.  Why 
do  not  you  look  at  this  miserable  little 
life,  with  all  its  ups  and  downs,  as  I 
do?  At  the  very  worst,  'tis  but  a 
scratch,  a  temporary  ill,  to  be  soon  cured, 
by  that  dear  old  doctor,  Death  —  who 
gives  us  a  life  more  healthful  and  endur- 
ing than  all  the  physicians,  temporal  or 
spiritual,  can  give." 

In  1888  Booth  wrote  to  his  daughter :  — 
^^  If  there  be  rewards,  I  certainly  am  well 
paid  ;  but  hard  schooling  in  life's  thank- 
less lessons  has  made  me  somewhat  of  a 
philosopher,  and  Pve  learned  to  take  the 
buffets  and  rewards  of  fortune  with  equal 
thanks,  and  in  suffering  all  to  suffer  —  I 
won't  say  nothing ,  but  comparatively  little, 
Dick  Stoddard  wrote  a  poem  called  'The 
King's  Bell,'  which  fits  my  case  exactly 
(you  may  have  read  it).  He  dedicated 
it  to  Lorimer  Graham,  who  never  knew 
an  unhappy  day  in  his  brief  life,  instead 


EDWIN  BOOTH  151 

of  to  me,  who  never  knew  a  really  happy 
one.  You  mustn't  suppose  from  this  that 
I'm  ill  in  mind  or  body  :  on  the  contrary, 
I  am  well  enough  in  both ;  nor  am  I  a 
pessimist.  I  merely  wanted  you  to  know 
that  the  sugar  of  my  life  is  bitter-sweet ; 
perhaps  not  more  so  than  every  man's 
whose  experience  has  been  above  and 
below  the  surface." 

Hawthorne,  in  the  last  year  of  his  life, 
had  a  word  on  the  same  poem.  He  wrote 
to  Mr.  Stoddard,  after  receiving  from  him 
^  ^  The  King' s  Bell "  :  —  ^  a  sincerely 
thank  you  for  your  beautiful  poem, 
which  I  have  read  with  a  great  deal  of 
pleasure.  It  is  such  as  the  public  had  a 
right  to  expect  from  what  you  gave  us 
in  years  gone  by  5  only  I  wish  the  idea 
had  not  been  so  sad.  I  think  Felix 
might  have  rung  the  bell  once  in  his  life- 
time, and  again  at  the  moment  of  death. 
Yet  you  may  be  right.  I  have  been  a 
happy  man,  and  yet  I  do  not  remember 
any  one  moment  of  such  happy  conspir- 


152  EDWm  BOOTH  \ 

ing  circumstances,  that  I  could  have  rung  j 
a  joy-bell  for  if 

Here  are  two  Americans,  at  least,  our  ! 
greatest  man  of  letters  and  our  greatest  j 
actor,  who  have  proved  by  comment  on  | 
the  same  text  that  they  are  not  open  to  i 
the  charge  of  unreasoning  optimism  so  '\ 
often  brought  against  us.     Since  both  i 
expressions  of  Booth's  philosophy  were 
written  before  his  attack  of  dangerous 
illness,  in  a  time  of  unbroken  success, 
and  long  after  his  bitterest  experiences,   \ 
they    may    be    accepted    as    deliberate  \ 
statements  of  his  attitude  toward  life. 
But,  whatever  his  general  attitude  and 
view,  he  gave  no  sign,  even  toward  the 
end,  of  feeling  poignantly  the  separate 
pang  of  the  actor's  lot.     Booth's  case,   | 
he  must  have  known,  was  that  of  the 
dying  painter  before  whose  eyes  all  his 
pictures  and  all  copies  of  them  should  be 
torn  in  shreds;  of  the  dying  sculptor 
whose  statues  and  all  casts  of  them  should  i 
be  hammered  to  bits ;    of  the  writer, 


EDWIN  BOOTH  153 

who,  in  his  last  days,  should  look  upon 
a  bonfire  of  all  his  books  and  all  means 
of  reproducing  them.  Booth  knew  that 
his  Lear  J  and  Samlet,  and  the  rest,  would 
go  down  into  the  grave  before  him,  and 
that  the  spiritual  body  of  his  art  would 
crumble  before  his  natural  body.  Yet, 
however  much  he  felt  the  pity  of  his 
fate  —  and  he  must  have  felt  it  so  far  as 
the  absence  of  all  vanity  or  littleness 
would  let  him — there  is  no  record  to 
show  that  he  lamented  it. 

Nor  was  there  anything  of  the  awful 
gloom  and  vacancy  of  spirit  that  came 
to  Garrick,  or  of  Mrs.  Siddons's  forlorn 
repetition — ^^This  is  the  time  I  used  to 
be  thinking  of  going  to  the  theatre  ; 
first  came  the  pleasure  of  dressing  for 
my  part,  and  then  the  pleasure  of  acting 
it ;  but  that  is  all  over  now."  Instead, 
Booth  looked  back,  not  uncheerfully, 
over  the  long  road  that  had  led  him  from 
The  Cabin  and  The  Farm  to  the  beauti- 
ful house  of  The  Players.     His  thoughts 


154  EDWIN  BOOTH 

turned  often  to  his  father  and  to  religion. 
He  spoke  of  actors,  living  and  dead ;  of 
remarkable  and  comic  happenings  in  his 
own  career  ;  of  his  German  tour  ;  of  his 
friejids.  He  took  pleasure  in  the  club, 
and  in  seeing  the  members  of  his  family. 
His  little  grandchildren  were  a  particu- 
lar delight  to  him.  To  them,  indeed. 
Booth's  ^4ast  coherent  words  were  ad- 
dressed." ^^My  boy,''  Mrs.  Grossmann 
writes,  ^^  called  gently,  ^How  are  you, 
dear  grandpa?'  and  the  answer  came 
loud  and  clear,  in  the  familiar,  boyish 
way,  ^How  are  you  yourself,  old  fel- 
lowr  '' 

^^  As  he  lay  dying '' —  says  Mrs.  Gross- 
mann—  ^^unconscious  even  of  my  pres- 
ence, or  of  the  fearful  electric  storm 
which  was  raging  without,  on  that  sad 
afternoon  of  the  sixth  of  June,  a  glory 
seemed  to  rest  upon  his  loved  features, 
and  I  felt,  in  spite  of  heart-breaking 
grief,  that  he  was  at  peace.  And  when 
the  dark  curtain  of  night  had  fallen, 


EDWIN  BOOTH  155 

and  the  storm  had  ceased  without,  and 
we  sat  watching  and  waiting  for  what 
we  knew  had  to  come  we  were  startled 
by  the  sudden  going  out  of  all  the 
electric  lights  in  the  chamber  and  in 
the  street  beneath.  Was  such  dark- 
ness ever  felt  before  1  Alas !  not  for 
me.'' 

Edwin  Booth  died  at  the  Players' 
Club,  a  little  after  one  o'clock  on  the 
morning  of  June  7,  1893.  On  the 
ninth,  just  before  sunset,  he  was  buried 
at  Mount  Auburn,  beside  the  wife  of  his 
youth. 


He  was  a  great  actor,  a  good  Christian, 
a  brave  and  much-tried  man. 


SAEGENT'S  POETEAIT  OF  EDWIN  j 
BOOTH  AT  ^^THE  PLAYEES.''   I 

That  face  which  no  man  ever  saw 
And  from  his  memory  banished  quite, 
With  eyes  in  which  are  Hamlet's  awe 
And  Cardinal  Eichelieu's  subtle  light, 
Looks  from  this  frame.     A  master' s  hand 
Has  set  the  master-player  here, 
In  the  fair  temple  that  he  planned 
Kot  for  himself.     To  us  most  dear 
This  image  of  him  !     ^^It  was  thus 
He  looked  ;  such  pallor  touched  his 

cheek ; 
With  that  same  grace  he  greeted  us  — 
Nay,  'tis  the  man,  could  it  but  speak  !  " 
Sad  words  that  shall  be  said  some  day  — 
Far  fall  the  day  !     O  cruel  Time, 
Whose  breath  sweeps  mortal  things  away, 
Spare  long  this  image  of  his  prime. 
That  others  standing  in  the  place 
Where,  save  as  ghosts,  we  come  no  more, 
May  know  what  sweet  majestic  face 
The  gentle  Prince  of  Players  wore  ! 

Thomas  Bailey  Aldrice 


BIBLIOGEAPHY. 

For  Bootli's  own  contributions  to  the 
literature  of  the  drama  the  reader  may 
turn  to  the  fifteen  volumes  of  Prompt- 
Books,  containing  his  stage  versions  of 
^'Hamlet/'  ^^King  Lear"  and  many 
other  plays,  edited,  with  notes  and 
stage  directions,  by  William  Winter 
(New  York,  1878  :  Francis  Hart  &  Co.)  ; 
to  the  third  volume  of  Actors  and  Act- 
resses of  Great  Britain  and  the  United 
States,  edited  by  Laurence  Hutton  and 
Brander  Matthews  (New  York,  1886: 
Cassell  &  Co.,  5  vols.),  and  containing 
papers  on  Kean  and  Junius  Brutus 
Booth  by  Edwin  Booth ;  and  to  the 
notes  contributed  by  Booth  to  Dr. 
Horace  Howard  Furness's  Variorum 
Editions  of  '^Othello''  and  ^^The  Mer- 
chant of  Venice ''  (Philadelphia:  J.  B. 
Lippincott  Co.). 

Of  the  writings  about  Booth  the  fol- 
lowing may  be  mentioned : 


158  BIBLIOGEAPHY 

I.  The  Elder  and  the  Younger 
Booth.  By  Asia  Booth  Clarke.  Ameri- 
can Actor  Series.  (Boston,  1882  :  James 
E.  Osgood  &  Co.) 

II.  The  Atlantic  Monthly,  September, 
1893.  ' '  Edwin  Booth. ' '  By  Henry  A. 
Clapp. 

III.  The  Century  Magazine.  November 
and  December,  1893.  ^^  Memories  and 
Letters  of  Edwin  Booth.''  By  WiUiam 
Bispham. 

IV.  Edwin  Booth.  By  Laurence 
Hutton.  Black  and  White  Series. 
(New  York,  1893  :  Harper  &  Brothers.) 

Y.  Shadows  of  the  Stage.  By 
William  Winter.  Articles  in  the  Sec- 
ond and  Third  Series.  (New  York, 
1893-95  :  The  MacmiUan  Co.) 

YI.  LiEE  AND  Art  of  Edwin  Booth. 
By  WiUiam  Winter.  (New  York,  1893  : 
The  Macmillan  Co.  Eevised  edition, 
1894.) 


I  BIBLIOGEAPHY  159 

VII.  Edwin  Booth.  EecoUections  by 
his  Daughter,  and  Letters  to  Her  and  to 
His  Friends.  By  Edwina  Booth  Gross- 
mann.  Q^ew  York,  1894 :  The  Century 
Co.) 


The  beacon  BIOGRAPHIES. 

M.  A.  DeWOLFE  HOWE,  Editor. 


The  aim  of  this  series  is  to  furnish  brief,  read- 
able, and  authentic  accounts  of  the  lives  of  those 
Americans  whose  personalities  have  impressed 
themselves  most  deeply  on  the  character  and 
history  of  their  country.  On  account  of  the 
length  of  the  more  formal  lives,  often  running 
into  large  volumes,  the  average  busy  man  and 
woman  have  not  the  time  or  hardly  the  inclina- 
tion to  acquaint  themselves  with  American  bi- 
ography. In  the  present  series  everything  that 
such  a  reader  would  ordinarily  care  to  know  is 
given  by  writers  of  special  competence,  who 
possess  in  full  measure  the  best  contemporary 
point  of  view.  Each  volume  is  equipped  with 
a  frontispiece  portrait,  a  calendar  of  important 
dates,  and  a  brief  bibliography  for  further  read- 
ing. Finally,  the  volumes  are  printed  in  a  form 
convenient  for  reading  and  for  carrying  handily 
in  the  pocket. 

SMALL,  MAYNARD  &  COMPANY,  Publishers. 
Pierce  Building,  Copley  Square,  Boston. 

[over"] 


The   beacon    BIOGRAPHIES 


The  following  volumes  are  issued:  — 

Louis  Agassiz,  by  Alice  Bache  Gould. 

Edwin  Booth,  by  Charles  Townsend  Copeland. 

Phillips  Brooks,  by  M.  A.  De Wolfe  Howe. 

John  Brown,  by  Joseph  Edgar  Chamberlin. 

Aaron  Burr,  by  Henry  Childs  Merwin. 

James  Fenimore  Cooper,  by  W.  B.  Shubrick  Clymer. 

Stephen  Decatur,  by  Cyrus  Townsend  Brady. 

Frederick  Douglass,  by  Charles  W.  Chesnutt. 

Ralph  Waldo  Emerson,  by  Frank  B.  Sanborn. 

David  G.  Farragut,  by  James  Barnes. 

Ulysses  S.  Grant,  by  Owen  Wister. 

Alexander  Hamilton,  by  James  Schouler. 

Nathaniel  Hawthorne,  by  Mrs.  James  T.  Fields. 

Father  Hecker,  by  Henry  D.  Sedgwick,  Jr. 

Sam  Houston,  by  Sarah  Barnwell  Elliott. 

**  Stonewall "  Jackson,  by  Carl  Hovey. 

Thomas  Jefferson,  by  Thomas  E.  Watson. 

Robert  E.   Lee,  by  William  P.  Trent. 

Henry  W.  Longfellow,  by  George  Rice  Carpenter. 

James  Russell  Lowell,  by  Edward  Everett  Hale,  Jr. 

Samuel  F.  B.  Morse,  by  John  Trowbridge. 

Thomas  Paine,  by  Ellery  Sedgwick. 

Daniel  Webster,  by  Norman  Hapgood. 

John  Greenleaf  Whittier,  by  Richard  Burton. 

The  following  are  among  those  in  preparation:  — 

John  Jacob  Astor,  by  Arthur  Astor  Carey. 
John  James  Audubon,  by  John  Burroughs. 
Benjamin  Franklin,  by  Lindsay  Swift. 


THE  WESTMINSTER  BIOG- 
RAPHIES. 


The  Westminster  Biographies  arc  uniform  in  plan, 
size,  and  general  make-up  with  the  Beacon  Biographies, 
the  point  of  important  difference  lying  in  the  fact  that 
they  deal  with  the  lives  of  eminent  Englishmen  instead 
of  eminent  Americans.  They  are  bound  in  limp  red  cloth, 
are  gilt-topped,  and  have  a  cover  design  and  a  vignette  title- 
page  by  Bertram  Grosvenor  Goodhue.  Like  the  Beacon 
Biographies^  each  volume  has  a  frontispiece  portrait,  a 
photogravure,  a  calendar  of  dates,  and  a  bibliography  for 
further  reading. 

The  following  volumes  are  issued:  — 

Robert  Browning,  by  Arthur  Waugh. 

Daniel  Defoe,  by  Wilfred  Whitten. 

Adam  Duncan  (Lord  Camperdown),  by  H.  W.  Wilson. 

George  Eliot,  by  Clara  Thomson. 

Cardinal  Newman,  by  A.  R.  Waller. 

John  Wesley,  by  Frank  Banfield. 

Many  others  are  in  preparation. 


SMALL,  MAYNARD  &  COMPANY,  Publishers, 
Pierce  Building,  Copley  Square,  Boston. 


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